


A Cold Evening

by Rheehemoth



Category: Naruto
Genre: Childhood Friends, Drama & Romance, F/M, Reunions, Romance, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-10-23
Updated: 2015-10-24
Packaged: 2018-04-27 17:43:16
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 58,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5057917
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rheehemoth/pseuds/Rheehemoth
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>They were separated almost 9 years ago, and now they've somehow reunited. But tortured pasts cannot be forgotten, and keep haunting them both. Can they go back to the way things were, or will they just become something more?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Chapter 1 – Explosions, Boredom And Sake**  
  
"Ah, nothing like some nice hot sake to lighten my mood" she said, thinking out loud, while trying to find the most comfortable place to lay down on her rooftop. Odd place to sit and drink sake, it may be, but she liked it nevertheless. It was a nice view as well. If you consider a nice view being, trees, trees and more trees.  
  
_What a god damn boring day. I can't even think of a time today where I wasn't bored. Come to think of it, what did I do today?_  She thought to herself while drinking the hot sake, and letting the effects of the warmth and alcohol set in as quickly as they please.  
  
_Well, first after I woke up, I had a shower. Hmm....then I did some basic taijustu training, and flung some kunai and shuriken around for the sheer sake of it. Then I cleaned up, and made some onigiri and ate it while giving the house a quick clean. And now I'm here. Seriously, maybe some hunter nins coming along would add some action to this completely, and unquestionably boring day._  
  
It seems that she spoke too soon, because moments after she finished that thought, a unfamiliar tingle of chakra lingered in her heightened shinobi senses.   
  
_Hmm, I should probably get this over with quickly, or my sake will get cold. And if that happens, then I'll be pissed off and I'll have no one to take it out on._  
  
She picked up and shook the bottle, only to not hear the familiar swishing sound of liquid inside a bottle.  
  
_Well shit, I must have drank it all without noticing, yeah. Good effort, I'd say._  
  
She got up, and jumped down from the rooftop, with the now empty bottle in hand, and went inside and made a b-line for her bedroom where she knew she left her katana, Hakujou, sitting peacefully in it's stand beside her bed.  
  
_Argh, they'll be here any minute. I've got to lead them away from the house, otherwise I can't go all out, now can I? No, I shouldn't assume that I'll actually have enough of a challenge on my hands to let me be destructive, because no doubt, I'll get pissed off if I psyche myself up too much._  
  
The tingle of chakra got stronger, then disappeared completely when they were about half a mile away. _Pfft, too late. I knew you were here 5 minutes ago._  She scoffed internally at their late reaction or just complete incompetence. She picked up her katana from it's stand, and strode nonchalantly outside, as if she was just going for a casual stroll, instead of taking care of a few hunter nin. She continued to walk until she was about a bit more than a quarter mile away from her house. No one had attacked her yet, so she thought that it was safe to assume that they probably hadn't moved since they masked their chakra or they'd just stopped moving when she came into sight. So, she sat right down, in the middle of the very small clearing she had stopped in, and waited. Waited for the slightest sound, like a twig to snap, a leaf to crunch, or that all to familiar whiz of a kunai, or the slight change in the air when a genjustu was cast. She waited with a cold and indifferent expression on her face, and simply waited and thought about what kind of approach these guys were going to take.   
  
That was, until she heard the sound of a kunai being thrown, and simply moved her head backward to dodge it, then calmly looked in the direction it was thrown from.   
  
"Today would be nice gentleman. I have another bottle of sake waiting to be consumed back at home, yeah" she said rather conversationally, and fought to hide the malicious smirk that was wanting to form on her face and she mentally prepared herself for battle.  
  
Silence.  
  
She didn't even bother to fling a kunai in the direction the other one had came at her before. Although, knowing her luck, it's not like she'd get a lucky shot and either incapacitate or kill the guy, let alone get anywhere near him. It's not that she didn't have the talent to find out exactly where he was, and chuck a few shuriken his way before he could blink, but she just wasn't bothered today. She simply sat, cross-legged, looking completely bored with the situation.  
  
_Che_ , she scoffed inwardly.  _Could these guys at least make it a little more fun for me? Well, as fun a few lame ass hunter nins could. When was the last time I got lucky and came across someone that actually survived more than 3 minutes against me._  
  
Three kunai flew at her from different directions. She seemed to flicker, and appeared again only metres away, standing up and ready to draw her katana, but not so much as to look completely guarded. _Heh, if I did that then they might not try and take advantage of the openings I leave for them._  Snickering mentally, she decided to make a move. They were testing her patience. She decided she wasn't going to need her katana, and instead just sat it up against a nearby tree.   
  
One of them finally appeared behind her and attempted to make a kick aimed at her head. She ducked lazily, and threw her flat hand out, and with her physical strength, she hit the shinobi's sternum and smirked deviously when she watched the shinobi's rag-doll-like body go flying back into the tree a few feet behind him and not move again. The other two shinobi came out from where they where hiding and threw as many punches and kicks as they could handle at her, none of which made any headway. She just stood there, bored, blocking or dodging whatever they were doing, and occasionally bothering to throw a few punches or kicks of her own, most of which hit with enough force to send whichever shinobi they hit a few feet back, before they jumped right back into it after recovering.   
  
_Booorrrriiinnnggg. They aren't even making it interesting by using weapons. I certainly wouldn't mind if one of them pulled out a katana, but from the looks of it neither of them have one. I don't think their buddy over there slumped against the tree had one either. Heheh._  She thought, whilst trying not to break her stoic mask and smirk evilly.  
  
After toying with them for a few minutes, she decided to call it quits, and started using her chakra control to start using her all too famous enormous physical strength to start taking out these guys in one blow. One of them was recovering after getting a foot to the ribs, which were most likely broken, or at least cracked, while the other started swinging a kick aimed for her side. As soon as she read his move it was all over for him. _Time to start taking this a little more seriously, hmm?_  She lifted her leg up to block the kick, and shot out a blast of chakra with the impact and the shinobi stumbled back, clutching at his leg and panting frantically. The opportunity was there, and she made a split second decision to finish him. One chakra infused punch later, the shinobi landed on the ground several feet away with a thud, and a crushed skull to boot. Slowly turning back to her other opponent, who stood still, quite shocked at what just happened, she allowed the corners of her mouth to twist upwards in a shadow of a smirk, then took advantage of his shock to swing a quick chakra laced kick to his head. When the dust settled, so to speak, she looked around like nothing had happened until she heard a very weak, strangled and hoarse voice to her left.   
  
"Kage Oni, we shouldn't...have expected....any less from...you".  
  
"Damn straight. Ended up being your downfall, yeah. I assume the Tsuchikage sent you?" the 'Kage Oni' said after a passing glance at his hitai-ate, with nonchalance and a slight hint of distaste when it came to mentioning the Tsuchikage.  
  
"I guess that...I should be glad. Dying while fighting.....someone of your calibre.....however easy it....seemed for you" the Iwa shinobi choked out feebly.  
  
"You should. Not many shinobi get to die by the hand of an enemy such as myself" she drawled, rather smugly at that.  
  
The Iwa shinobi smirked sardonically.  
  
She stilled when the Iwa shinobi's hand went into a pocket and brought out a stack of explosive tags and looked up at her.  
  
_Fuck._  Was the only thought on her mind before she started sprinting away with as much chakra as she could use backing her up.  
  
\----------------------------------  
  
Deidara was thoroughly bored. Not to mention annoyed.   
  
_Tobi better hurry the fuck up and tell us this place is clear, or I'll be pissed, and then that will make it the third time I've tried to kill him today._  
  
"Deidara-senpai!!!!!! The hideout is clear!!!" Tobi said popping out of the ground and proceeding to jump about stupidly.  
  
"Alright, Tobi. Just shut the fuck up and go inside, yeah. I've had enough of your shit for one day." Deidara spat as he strolled around the hideout to find the closest bedroom.  
  
They were in an Akatsuki hideout in some country that Deidara didn't know, or didn't bother to find out the name of. If he wanted to do that he'd probably have to ask Tobi, which was not happening any time soon. Not like Tobi would know anyway. As soon as he opened his mouth to inhale so he could speak Deidara probably would have already sent an explosive at him. Speaking of that, he really felt like blowing some things up. The hideout was miles and miles away from being close to any village or main road, one of the main reasons why it was a hideout used by the Akatsuki, so he figured it would be okay to let of some small-ish explosions to let off some steam.   
  
He opened the door to the room he had claimed, and sighed silently in relief to see or hear Tobi nowhere in sight. He quickly crept outside and walked a few hundred feet away before making sure there was no one, shinobi or civilian alike, around before he started creating his art. For about two hours, Deidara blew up trees, rocks and mostly anything else he could find before he decided to sit down a have a break for a few minutes. That was the case, before he heard a shrill cry...  
  
"DEIDARA-SENPAI!!!!"  
  
Ugh, fucking lovely. Just after I calmed down.  
  
"What is it Tobi?" he said, not bothering to hide his rapidly increasing frustration.  
  
"Tobi got some dinner from a village about an hour away. Does Deidara-senpai want some?" Tobi said rather excitedly, shifting his weight between his feet as if he just wanted to run around in circles for the next few hours for no reason.  
  
"No Tobi, I don't want anything to eat even though we've been travelling to get here most of the day and haven't eaten anything all day" Deidara said sarcastically while glaring at his 'ridiculous excuse for a partner' as he described it the other day after Tobi had pissed him off by nearly knocking him out of a tree after he slipped when they were travelling at night in the rain.  
  
"Oh....."  
  
Tobi looked absolutely crestfallen. Well, as crestfallen as he could with that orange swirling mask on. It was like his whole life had come down to this one moment, and it had crumbled at his feet. Deidara turned away from him and started towards the house cursing quietly before quite loudly and angrily telling Tobi that he was an idiot and of course he wanted something to eat, which seemed to set him back to shifting his weight between his feet and following Deidara into the house.  
  
A few hours later, Deidara grumbled to Tobi that he was going to bed and strolled off towards the room he was staying in for the time being. It was then that he allowed his thoughts to wander. He could have sworn that he had heard the all to familiar sound of a far away explosion when they were a few miles away from the hideout. No surprise that an explosion, no matter what sort could catch his interest. He wondered what was blown up, and more importantly who blew it up. Aaanndd, now he was feeling like blowing stuff up again. He shook his head and huffed quietly in amusement. He really was a mad bomber.  
  
He took off his cloak and began to empty the pockets, but got distracted when his fingers felt cold metal. He pulled his hand out of the pocket, still grasping onto the object.  
  
It was a necklace that had a thin but sturdy and strong chain, with a pendant dangling gently off it that was the kanji for shadow. He was still pissed that he didn't get to give to her that day. But then again, if he did give it to her, he wouldn't really have anything to physically remember her by.   
  
"Sokkenai Hitori" he said quietly while holding the necklace and looking at the pendant intently. He sat down on his bed, completely forgetting the previous task. He stripped off down to his pants and laid down on the old, dusty, yet oddly cosy bed. He thought about her into the late hours of the night. Was she still alive? If so, where did she go after that day? What did she do? Try as he might, he wouldn't be able to try and convince himself that he didn't care about her. It had been nearly 13 years ago when he first met her, and it had been nearly 9 years since they were separated.  
  
He laid there and soon enough, the thoughts of her eventually lulling him to sleep.


	2. Chapter 2 - The Quiet Shadow and the Artistic Bomber

**Chapter 2 – The Quiet Shadow And The Artistic Bomber**

She woke, and sat up with a start.

"What the fuck!?!?!" she yelled loudly to no one in particular when she felt the sudden pain in her body hit her.

_Jesus fucking Christ, I feel like I just got hit over the head with a shovel. What the hell happened?_ She thought to herself whilst looking herself over for injuries, and finding just a few minor burns and coming to the conclusion that she probably had a minor concussion. Some of waist-length midnight black hair was singed at the ends, but nothing that she couldn't just trim.

Then she head the sound of a very distant explosion. Her head quickly turned at the direction the sound was coming from. She decided against bothering to check it out, as she should probably heal herself first and figure out what happened. She got up slowly, leaning against a nearby rock. And turned around to take a quick look at where she was, and maybe find any clues about what happened. She started sending chakra to various parts of her body, so that she could figure out the damage, and heal any internal injuries. She walked about 10 metres before looking up ahead, and noticing that the clearing she vaguely remembered being in yesterday was bigger. Much bigger. There were charring and scorch marks on the ground, rocks and trees. It came back to her all at once.

_That fucking Iwa shinobi. I really should just move house, because they seem to find me really quickly. Not like I care, but still. It gets really annoying when someone pulls out a stack of explosive tags.....It's always the explosive tags. Bastard._

She looked around for a few more minutes and then remembered that she brought Hakujou with her, and started muttering various curses while looking around frantically for the katana. Eventually, she found it about 50 feet from where the Iwa shinobi set off the tags. She growled quietly to herself when she picked it up, and saw the charring marks on the scabbard. She pulled it out of the scabbard, and checked it over, being as careful as she could, worrying that the mental image of the whole thing just disintegrating into ash in her hands would actually become a reality. When she decided that there wasn't any damage other than the small charring marks on the scabbard, she turned and began to stroll back to her house. When she got to the front door, she looked up, and found the sun was a fair bit further across the sky that when she came out earlier. She inwardly hoped that she hadn't been out until roughly the same time the next day. That would be pretty embarrassing.

_It looks like I'm going to have to go into town today. I'm getting low on food._ She sighed, and looked through her cupboards for something quick to eat before she sat down to fix that burn on the back of her right thigh that was driving her nuts. After about half an hour, she was fixed up, and ready to head into town to stock up on supplies.

A few minutes later, she was leaping through the trees at a fairly casual pace and she began to notice that the sound of the explosions she heard earlier was getting slowly louder. She decided to check it out, but thought that it probably would be a good idea to keep herself hidden.

When she made her way closer, she used her Kage Oni no Jutsu to hide herself amongst the shadows and masked her chakra as much as she could while still holding the jutsu. She made her way through the shadows until she was able to clearly see a human sized black and red cloaked figure in the distance that looks like an....

_Akatsuki? Nah, it can't be. That would just be too random. But if it is, then I could certainly have some fun with this. Since I can only sense this one in the area. I just hope I don't accidentally get myself killed, but either way, I'm definitely not passing up a fight with a lone Akatsuki member._

She continued to stalk cautiously through the trees to bring herself closer to the Akatsuki member. It seemed they didn't notice her there, or if they did, they certainly didn't show it.

_Well, they're fucking Akatsuki, of course they'd be able to control their reaction. They aren't just random snotty genin brats fresh out of the academy. So there probably isn't much point in trying to sneak up on them. I wouldn't be surprised if they already knew I was here, even though I'm still not that close._

Said Akatsuki member seemed to vaguely tilt their head in her direction enough to show that they did know she was there, and just hadn't bothered attacking her yet. They just continued to occasionally stick their hands in pouches that were sitting on their sides, and when she got closer she could see something small and white that seemed to....come out of the hand that the Akatsuki held out in front.

When she got closer she could see that the Akatsuki member was most likely male, even with the long blonde hair that had a section at the front that covered the left side of his face. There was a little voice in the back of her mind saying "Uhh, I think we know this guy. He seems kind of familiar, yeah". She ignored it, and continued to watch him from her spot in the trees, still hidden in the shadow. Her pale grey eyes narrowed as she noticed a little white thing come closer to her position. The unknown Akatsuki member brought his hand out in front of him, and with two fingers held up, smirked, and muttered something, before the white object made a small explosion on the ground a few feet away from the tree she was in.

_Hah, he doesn't know, my exact position. I really can't be bothered sneaking around, even though I'm so god damn good at it. And he clearly already knows I'm here, so I may as well just waltz on up and ask he wants to come over for tea._

She released the Kage Oni jutsu when she moved out of the way of a large tree branch, and stood up on the branch just next to it, and looked straight at the blonde Akatsuki, daring to let a slightly curious smirk come over her face, and minutely raised an eyebrow when he just turned to her, and stared straight back. She noticed now that she was able to look at him properly, and not from behind a tree branch, that he was probably only a little taller than she was. But Christ, he looked even more familiar now. She crossed her arms and made no threatening movements, just stood there, her smirk slowly getting wider.

He seemed to unconsciously lean closer and she could see that he had the exact same curious smirk on his face that she did, but all of a sudden, his brow furrowed and his smirk dropped. She dropped down to the ground and 'put on' her blank mask one again. He seemed almost confused at her actions, and she fought the urge to sarcastically ask him what the problem was. She took a few steps closer to him, and he stilled, but showed no signs of attacking her. She didn't bother to hide her widened eyes and raised brow when he whispered something that brought back a lot of old memories.

\----------------------------

_They ran across the ground as fast as they could. They were getting very much used to running away from people. It was starting to get easier for them. Over the next few minutes, the chorus of yelling that was behind them died down._

_"Do you think we lost them?" the young blond boy asked breathlessly as him and the girl with him stopped to catch her breath. "Can you sense them at all?"_

_"You know that neither of us can sense things properly, we haven't learnt to control our chakra properly, yeah. We only know what we've taught ourselves. Don't ask me stupid questions! Baka!" she said irritably while trying to take breaths._

_"Yeah, but you still have way better chakra control than me and better sensory capabilities. Forget I asked, but I can't hear anyone, so I think we're okay". He retorted back at her with equal irritation._

_"Never mind, it's fine, yeah. Let's just keep moving onto the next village so that we can at least buy something decent for us to eat for us for once with the money we..uh..borrowed." she said a lot more calmly, before stumbling slightly and wincing._

_"Hitori! Are you alright? Did you get injured?" he said worriedly while he went over to her, arms outstretched in case the smaller girl named Hitori showed any signs of falling over or passing out._

_"No, don't worry Deidara. I'm fine, just a cut on my leg I didn't realise I had, yeah."_

_"Well, here. I've got the bandages in my pack, so let me fix it up for you."_

_He gestured for her to sit down and while she did, Deidara took off his pack, and rummaged around for the bandages he knew were in there. Once he found them and pulled them out of the pack and looked up at Hitori while she positioned her leg so that he could dress it for her. She knew that she was completely capable of doing it herself, the wound wasn't even that deep, but it was long, it ran up most of the right side of her calf, but she knew how worried he was about her, and just decided to let him do as he pleased, and besides, she appreciated his kindness too much to refuse._

_After Deidara patched her up, he pulled her pants leg back down, feeling glad that the wound wasn't really that deep, barely a few millimetres deep. But he couldn't seem to help himself with her, he just worried about her, even though she was just as capable of taking care of herself as he was. He felt her gaze on him and it broke him out his reverie. He looked up at her, and instantly melted. She was looking at him with such kind, grateful eyes, as if just that simple gesture meant the whole world to her._

_"Arigato, Deidara" she said sweetly, while standing up._

_"No problem, Hitori" he replied, smiling just as sweetly back at her._

_\-----------------------------_

"Hitori?" Deidara said quietly, still shocked at how much this woman before him looked like his childhood friend.

She recognised him immediately after she heard that. Shit, I should have known it was him. I should have recognised that ridiculously feminine blond mop of hair and that perpetual smirk on that smug bastard's face. Now what am I supposed to do? I'll have to fight him and make it look like I killed him so I can get him out of here without his partner suspecting anything. She started to slowly move forwards a few steps before she stopped and decided on what to say.

"Akatsuki...what's your purpose here, yeah?". She didn't like the idea of calling him Akatsuki, but she had to make it seem like she didn't recognise him because she had to make sure that he wouldn't hesitate. She was secretly excited to see just how strong he had become. He wouldn't be wearing that cloak for nothing.

Deidara was absolutely, thoroughly stumped on what to say. It seemed that she had not heard what he said before, or just acted like she didn't. He just decided not to reply, and just stayed silent instead and tried to conceal his surprise. The woman in the black hooded cloak seemed to flicker and disappear and reappear with a kunai in hand just slightly behind him to his right. Fuck, she's fast. She disappeared again, and reappeared a few feet directly in front of him and smirked slightly before dropping to one knee and smashing her left fist into the ground, which made a decent sized crater around the area of impact, and made huge cracks in the ground beneath him. He jumped up to get away so he wouldn't get caught in the moving terrain and landed on a branch just above him. She ran straight towards the tree he was in and kicked it, which made it snap clean where her booted foot made impact. He would have stayed there with his jaw dropped and wide eyes if he didn't realise that he should probably move if he didn't want to die. He put his left hand into his clay pouch and started making an explosive while he jumped to the next tree. He saw her hands begin to move, but couldn't for the life of him follow the movements.

"Katon: Gokakyu no jutsu!" she said while jumping back a bit an aiming the partially toned down jutsu at Deidara. She smirked when he dodged the large fireball and sent an explosive her way. She moved away from it and quickly noticed that it was following her, and she guessed that it probably wouldn't explode until Deidara commanded it to. She aimed and threw a shuriken at it, and hit the tree just behind it with the explosive spider pinned to it. She then took out three kunai, and threw them all at Deidara directly, making sure not to put any chakra in the throw so that if it did hit him, it wouldn't be so full of inertia that it would tear right through him. Just as she hoped he would, he easily dodged them all. She made five Kage Bunshin that helped to block the surprisingly low charged explosion that Deidara sent her way and quickly used her Chidori Kunai no jutsu and sent them at the little explosive birds coming towards her instantly making them useless. She then used her Kage Oni jutsu to try and throw him off. She slowly and cautiously stalked around behind him, while he stood there looking utterly bewildered, she tried not to make a sound, but didn't bother making certain that she was dead silent, and crept up behind him and put a kunai to his neck.

"Don't even think about moving, yeah." she whispered against his ear and restrained herself from chuckling when she heard his sharp intake of breath.

"It's you. No one else I know uses that jutsu, and I'd never forget those eyes." Deidara said breathlessly, just trying to take it all in at once.

"Why don't we talk about this somewhere else, hmm? But if you leave here with me now, we have to make sure that your partner will think you're dead. So, make some more explosions. We need the charring and scorch marks for the extra effect , yeah." she said as tonelessly as she could, pulling the kunai away from his throat, and watching him, still with slight caution as he made some larger explosions around them, clearing trees and burning the ground.

"And....ditch the cloak, yeah. I hope you also realise that I will not be letting you leave my sight, don't you?" she asked, kind of rhetorically, kind of not, as she watched him take off his cloak, and put a few kunai slices through it before dropping it.

She walked over to where he dropped it, and lifted up her arm and pushed the sleeve of her cloak up, then took the kunai from his hand, and before he could ask her what she was doing, she made a cut on the inside arm just below the elbow and dropped the blood onto the cloak, before grabbing his arm and doing the same thing, and the fact that he didn't say anything didn't go past her. She walked away, still feeling his gaze on her and put more blood around various parts of the almost battlefield. He did the same and after a few minutes of making the scene of Deidara's supposed death look as real as possible before meeting slightly awkwardly in the middle of the clearing made by Deidara's explosions.

"Follow me" she said, still trying her hardest not to hint to him just how much of an inner freak out she was having.


	3. Chapter 3 - Distance and Familiarity

**Chapter 3 – Distance And Familiarity**  
  
They started to make their way away from the hideout when she suddenly remembered that she should probably heal the cut she made on his arm, just in case there was a trail of blood behind them. She had no idea if his partner was a good tracker or not, but having a trail of blood would make it possible for even a genin to track them. She totally forgot about it, as she healed hers instantly after she's put more blood over the 'battlefield'. She stopped abruptly and he did the same almost immediately after, undoubtedly because he hadn't taken his eyes off her since they stopped fighting which she hadn't failed to notice. She kept her blank facade up and reached for his arm, and he showed no signs of turning down her touch or hesitating. She knew she shouldn't look at him, out of fear of what she would see in those piercing blue eyes that she hadn't seen in so long. She healed the minor cut within a few seconds, before turning away, still telling herself not to look in his eyes, when he reached out and gently grabbed her arm to get her attention. She heard him inhale before he started to speak, and seemed to hesitant for a few moments before he finally spoke.  
  
"Uh...Hitori...." he almost whispered to her before even thinking about what he was going to say. He also noticed how she didn't seem phased by his sudden contact either. He didn't even know why he had to take a hold of her arm. Maybe just to confirm to himself that she was actually there, that this was real. He didn't want to admit even to himself that he may have doubted his sanity for a moment. Not that he had much of that left.  
  
"Yes?" she asked as bluntly as possible, while glancing down at his hand on her arm, and turning her head enough to look out the corner of eye at him so he could see the side of her profile while waiting on an answer she knew wouldn't come.  
  
".......never mind" he said reluctantly before releasing her arm and watched as she turned back in front of her, and started running again.   
  
\-----------------------------  
  
When they arrived back at her place that was set in the middle of a small clearing, she walked straight through the front door and left it open for him to follow suit. He was still a little confused and shocked about the situation, and especially about the fact that her house was right here, in front of him. After all the years he spent wondering where she was, she just happened to be here, all of a quick trip away from the hideout. She headed straight for her bedroom and started collecting up as many things as she could, and stuffing them into the pack that was thrown carelessly across the room a few days ago after returning from getting supplies in town. She sighed quietly and thought, This will be undoubtedly interesting. It's certainly made up for my extremely boring day.  
  
Deidara was still standing just inside the front door and looked around the very small house that he had been lead to. He was still very unsure of what was going to happen here, and if he knew her well enough, she probably didn't even know what she was doing. He set out to find where she went, and saw her through the doorway leading into what seemed like her room, throwing things in her pack and putting things in her cloak pockets. His eyes followed her every move, and he still couldn't believe it.  _I wonder if Tobi has finally driven me completely insane._  He thought and mentally huffed in a mix of frustration and amusement.  
  
She cleared out as much of the small medical cupboard she has stocked full of medicines, syringes, herbs and poisons and started laying a few medical scrolls out on the bed, and storing some of the medical supplies in them.   
  
"Deidara. We can't stay here. It's too close to the hideout. We're going to head towards the east."  she inwardly snickered as she seen him flinch almost imperceptibly out the corner of her eye when she spoke, clearly breaking him out of his thoughts. "You should get yourself something to eat as well. We'll be doing some hard running until later on tonight. Go and help yourself. I'll be out in a minute".  
  
She turned to look at him when he didn't answer, and noticed how intense his gaze became as soon as she made eye contact with him.  _Bad move._  She thought before sighing internally and seeing him almost tear his eyes away from hers and nod once almost imperceptibly before strolling back out to where he saw what looked like a small kitchen before.  
  
While he was gone, she dared to dwell on the matter.  _He hasn't changed much. If anything he's MORE smug and it seems he's even more involved in his art. Seems like he's definitely gotten as strong as I knew he would. He really wasn't wearing that Akatsuki cloak for no reason. I could tell he was holding back a lot in the 'fight' we had earlier. He looked a little surprised by my speed though but I guess that's a given. Shunshin no jutsu is quite a speciality of mine. Oh well, I guess we'll just have to wait and see what happens._  
  
He also only allowed himself to think as he almost mechanically looked through the cupboards for something quick to eat for the both of them.  _She's changed. That kindness that I used to see in her eyes when she looked at me isn't there any more. She's so much more cold, guarded, and probably pretty jaded too. Even though she'd probably be able to hide it from anyone else, I can see that minuscule hint of loneliness in her eyes. Her personality actually matches her namesake now. I don't even know what I'm doing here, or where we are going to go. There's this voice in my head telling me to stay with her._  
  
"Deidara. Snap out of it, yeah." Hitori said before clicking her fingers in front of his face, and raising a dark eyebrow in amusement at his failed attempt at hiding how lost in thought he was.  
  
"Sorry, I was just....." he muttered and exhaled deeply in what was almost a sigh before continuing to look around for food, almost thankful for her interruption and stopping him from admitting something to himself he didn't want to think about right now.  
  
"Never mind about the food, we've wasted too much time here. We'll just have to buy something on the way, yeah." Hitori said, while picking up her pack, and putting it on, before going through the minimal amount of cupboards and stuffing some random items of food as she could fit in another one and giving it to him, before walking towards the front door.  
  
"Let's go" she said, turning towards the front door and reaching out to open it, but stopped when she heard him speak.  
  
"Hitori?" he said, a lot more confident than he actually felt, and inwardly scowled at his own, dare he say it, nervousness.   
  
"Do you actually have something to say this time...Deidara?" she asked a little less monotonously than usual, with a hint of amusement, and when he saw the upturned corners of her mouth and slightly raised eyebrow, he realised that she was teasing him, and for the first time since he saw her, he smiled genuinely and was glad that she hadn't completely lost her sense of humour.   
  
"You became a medic nin after all. Seems you've gotten pretty strong too, yeah" he replied, and allowed herself to smile a little when she saw the flash of pride pass behind his eyes. His eyes softened at her smile and his smile quickly turned into a grin. He didn't seem to notice the minor raising of her eyebrow as she recognised her own speech quirk that seemed to have become his own as well.   
  
 _If only he could see that ridiculously schoolboy looking grin on his face right now. I'm sure it would instantly turn into a frown if I pointed it out. If only I could take a photo. He's adopted my speech quirk too. I wonder why that is, especially since he always used to tease me about it, bastard. And I'm not even going to bother discussing the medic nin thing. It was pretty obvious that I should be a medic nin with my chakra control, but it's not like I had a choice in the matter anyway._  
  
"I could say that you don't seem so weak any more" she retorted teasingly and her smile turned into a devious smirk and widened a little when he snorted in amusement at her insinuation that he used to be weak. His grin became a little more smug when he realised that she must have been testing him before, when they 'fought' and that she obviously would have been holding back during it. That seemed to interest him and he wondered whether she was holding back with her Shunshin no jutsu, because if she was, he would be even more impressed than he was before. He could barely follow her movement as it was. It also seemed that she had perfected her Kage Oni no jutsu as well.  
  
She continued to open the door, and shut it after he walked out. She turned around to face the house, and felt his curious gaze on her. She quickly glanced at him and he saw the smug 'Check this out' look she had in her eyes. She quickly made a few hands seals and pushed her hands up against the door of the house, which a large seal appeared on almost like a summoning jutsu, and then the whole house disappeared into a huge puff of smoke, and when the smoke cleared, there was only a medium sized scroll left sitting on the ground. She took off her pack, and fastened the scroll to it, and then put the pack back on before turning to him with a shadow of a very smug smirk on her face.  
  
"How the fuck did you do that? Since when does a jutsu like that even exist?" Deidara asked, still quite surprised.  
  
"I know someone who has Moku natured chakra, same as the Shodai Hokage. He made this place for me using it, and we figured out how to store it in a scroll so that I could move if I needed to, yeah." she replied simply as if she was talking about pouring a glass of water.  
  
"That's pretty cool, yeah. And really convenient" he just looked at her and shook his head in amusement and awe.  
  
Hitori just looked a him with a tiny smirk and a raised eyebrow, which quickly turned into a scowl after he spoke again, and he figured that she didn't bother, care enough, or couldn't hide it for the second that it was there.  
  
"Hitori....what happened after we were separated?" He asked hesitantly, and looked up at her with curious and piercing blue eyes, and she looked right back with pale grey eyes that spoke volumes of what happened. She quickly composed herself and spoke after a few minutes of silently battling inwardly about whether to tell him, and having a staring battle with him to try and get her to tell him all that happened in the years they'd been apart. She had no idea how long it took her to speak again.  
  
"I could say that same for you, Deidara. But those are stories for another time, yeah. We should have left 10 minutes ago" she had her eyes slightly narrowed at him while she spoke, something which he didn't miss, then she turned away and began to start walking towards the trees.   
  
"I would say that we could use my clay bird for transport, but we should do that after we're a fair way away from here. Tobi would recognise it immediately if he saw it, yeah" he said, trying to lighten the mood and break the tension a little.  
  
"Hmm, a clay bird for transport. Innovative. But you're right, for now...we travel on foot" she jumped into the trees, and he sighed and shook his head, before following and leaping mechanically through the trees as if he was on autopilot.  
  
He decided not to press her for answers right now,  because she was right, they did need to leave, but the look that quickly appeared and disappeared as quickly as it came when he questioned her about it, only seemed to provoke his interest more. He would ask her again later, maybe when they settled down for the night.  _What if we don't stop for the night though? I want to know for complete curiosity's sake, obviously, but I also want to know because of what I've heard over the years. There's definitely been a few incidents that she could have been involved in. Especially that. But she seems pretty guarded about it. I guess for the time being I'm just going to have to be satisfied with knowing that she's alive and well._  
  
She noticed that he looked like he was in his own world, and inwardly scolded herself for allowing herself to scowl, which no doubt piqued his interest in the matter. He always was pretty curious as a kid. She knew that he would ask later on, and she had no idea when or what she was going to say to him about what happened after they parted. It was memories that she acknowledged, accepted, and blocked out. She knew that it was a part of her which she couldn't erase, and that it definitely wasn't as bad as what some other people might have been through in their life, but it was still something she'd rather forget. And then there was the matter of what her and Deidara were going to do to make sure that his survival wouldn't be found out by the Akatsuki and where they were going to go.  
  
 _Time will tell..._


	4. Chapter 4 - Punishment

**Chapter 4 – Punishment**  
  
They arrived at a small village several hours later, and when they finally got up the stairs and settled in the room at the decent inn they were staying at for the night. Deidara was relieved to finally sit down because Hitori was right, they did run...hard. He'd never admit it to her, but he may have been a little worn out. He was also pretty surprised that she didn't seem too affected by it, or she was just an amazing actor. He is –  _was?_  – a member of the Akatsuki, he should have no problem keeping up since he was pretty used to being chased by various ninja from various countries at various times of the day or night. Maybe it was just because he usually never had to run for such a long time since usually all he had to do was run until he could find a decent place to make a stand and take out the pursuing shinobi.    
  
When he was recovered, he did a quick summoning jutsu, and his own pack appeared on the bed in front of him and he opened it, and looked over at Hitori. He watched as she looked through her pack before bringing out various things and reorganising them, now that they weren't in a hurry to leave. He noticed that she seemed to do things very lazily, but it didn't seem to be from exhausted from running so hard for so long, it just seemed like she was just like that normally, so much so that for a moment he forgot that she was a shinobi. That was until a scroll she had set down on the table began to start rolling and moving ever closer to the edge of the table, and without even glancing or showing any signs of taking notice of it, she effortlessly reached out just as it fell off the table, and gracefully caught it before setting it back on the table again in a position that wouldn't allow it to start rolling again.   
  
Hitori nearly rolled her eyes as she constantly felt Deidara's eyes on her for the past ten minutes. She didn't really know what else to do in the situation, so she opted for the 'reorganise-pack-since-I-couldn't-pack-it-properly-before' option, which she thought was a pretty good idea to prolong the inevitable confrontation between them. She resisted the urge to sigh and shake her head at the ridiculousness of the situation that 'fate' had ever-so-kindly bestowed upon the two of them. She was honestly very glad to see him alive and well, even though the situation was less than fortunate. They wouldn't just be hunted now, like every other missing nin, but they'd have to keep under the radar even more so than normal, in case the Akatsuki somehow discovered Deidara's survival. Speaking of which...  
  
"Deidara, why did you join the Akatsuki?" she spoke, out of the blue, and still not looking at him, instead kept to 'reorganising her pack'.   
  
She had no idea what his answer would be, but she doubted that he would, with his free spirited personality would willingly let himself be tied down to any organisation, no matter it's purpose or goals. It was either that he joined voluntarily or was forced into it. Either way, she was still going to beat the shit out of him for it.  _Literally._  
  
Not knowing how she would react, he replied hesitantly after being silent for a few short moments, just watching her, looking for any signs of what was going through her mind.  
  
"...I was forced into it."  
  
"Hmm....Please elaborate on the circumstances."  
  
He noticed that she wasn't using her speech quirk, which usually always meant that she was serious. He doubted that aspect of her had changed at all.  
  
"Three members approached me and basically told me that I was joining, yeah. One of them, Uchiha Itachi, had the Sharingan, and the bastard challenged me, saying that if I beat him, that I would be left alone, but if he won I'd have to join, which he clearly did. I didn't even know that the Sharingan existed back then, so when I looked into his eyes to try and anticipate his movements, as most ninja do, he instantly caught me in a genjutsu. I ended up nearly blowing myself up." he recalled the event as if he was reliving the memories in his mind.  
  
He could just imagine the thought that was going through her mind right now. Probably something along the lines of, 'And because of your arrogance, you humiliated yourself and had to join the Akatsuki as a result. Idiot.'  
  
She didn't reply for a few minutes, and just stood with her back to him, ceasing her 'bag packing' with both hands on the table that she had her pack sitting on and her head turned slightly downward, as if she was deep in thought.  
  
"I see. In any case, come with me. Now." she said dangerously, the irritation in her voice becoming increasingly obvious to him.  
  
If he ever had much of a sense of self-preservation, he probably would be fearing for his life or his own uninjured body at the very least right now after hearing the low tone she was using, which definitely sounded threatening, and without a doubt promising shit to hit the fan. He watched her turn towards the door, so that he couldn't see her face, and almost –  _almost_  – hesitated in following after her. They walked out the front entrance to the inn, Deidara following a few steps behind Hitori, and she heard him make an amused sound in the back of his throat as he noticed the man working at the front desk asleep with his head in the middle of a magazine, that from a distance looked to have morally questionable content.   
  
They walked out until they were a fair distance into the forest that Deidara assumed they would be travelling through tomorrow, if they were to continue in the same direction. Hitori figured that no one from the tiny village back in the other direction would be able to hear them out here. She stopped walking, and slowly turned to Deidara, who had also stopped walking, with a expression a lot less blank than she usually seemed to have nowadays. In fact, from what Deidara could tell in the minimal light from a half-moon that was mostly shrouded and blocked by the trees, she almost looked....pissed off. And before he could even notice her movement, she'd dropped to one knee and smashed a fist, full of chakra straight into the ground that was in front of her. He quickly jumped back out of the way of the force of the ground moving around with sheer instinct, and when he landed a few feet back from his original spot, he realised just how much she must have been holding back the first time they 'fought'. The ground just got a few cracks in it last time, but this time it was completely different. It was almost like a small earth tremor.   
  
"You arrogant fool!" she said uncharacteristically loud while coming straight at him with fists prepared to break bones. He knew that he couldn't catch her punches, or block her kicks, because with the effect of the chakra, that would no doubt shatter whatever part of him he used to stop the humongous force that the less-than-average sized kunoichi could muster quite easily. Deidara realised at that point that he must look ridiculous, doing everything he could to avoid the attacks short of flat out running away from her, which would bruise his ego permanently.  
  
He dodged nearly everything she threw at him, not that she was really trying to kill him, but she couldn't help but get even more pissed off when she noticed the slightly confused and shocked look in his blue eye. She started channelling a lot less chakra to her extremities, and started moving much faster. He nearly ran into a tree behind him at one point while trying to dodge a left leg kick aimed straight for his side, and she took the opportunity to hit the heel of her palm into his stomach, just below his sternum (While being careful to put even less chakra again into the hit so she didn't actually kill him, just probably break 2 or 3 ribs). He flew back several feet in mid-air and hit a tree before he could even blink. His head went flying back on impact and smashed into the tree and with that, he was unconscious.   
  
\------------------------  
  
He woke up on a decently comfortable...bed?, after what felt like an eternity of sleep, which, in reality, had actually only been roughly one and a half hours, and tried to roll over before wincing and groaning when a huge amount of pain in his chest, stomach and head hit him all of a sudden. He noticed that breathing was a fair bit more painful than normal, and then the memories came back to him.   
  
Vaguely, he recalled her coming at him fists clenched and undoubtedly full of chakra, and it wouldn't surprise him if she could have and would have punched a hole right through him if he didn't dodge it.  
  
 _Ugh, I wonder what the fuck got into her to drop that cold, and guarded expression and just beat the shit out of me all of a sudden. It's probably got something to do with what I told her last night. I wonder where that ridiculously strong bitch is._  
  
As if sensing his thoughts, she came out of the bathroom towel drying her wet hair, not sparing a glance towards him, wearing a plain, baggy dark grey shirt and, wait....was she actually wearing pants with that? His eyes widened considerably and he began to stare the exposed parts of her rather pale skinned, toned legs. Again, she seemed to know what he was thinking because she turned away from him slightly and lent over forward a bit to get better access to the underneath parts of her hair so she could dry them as well, revealing a small pair of black satin boxers. If he wasn't mistaken, they were probably men's clothes that she'd most likely purchased especially for the reason for sleeping in them. Actually, now that he looked at them they started to look more and more familiar....  
  
"Are you wearing my clothes?" he asked, without even realised that he spoke out loud.  
  
"If you don't remember correctly, I didn't exactly have time to pack anything but complete necessities for myself when we were leaving, yeah. And you seem to have another set in your pack" she stood upright and let her almost waist length black hair fall over her shoulders before brushing some of it out of her face while turning around to face him with a slight sardonic smirk.  
  
He chuckled a little before realising how much it fucking hurt to do so. He tried to move a little to get in a more comfortable position, which failed terribly, and just made the pain worse. He didn't want to ask her to heal it because that would be an even bigger bruise to his ego. She threw her towel over the chair on the right side of the room and walked over to the bed, and it was only then did he realise that she must have only got them one room. He didn't notice this before because he was looking at one of the paintings on the wall of the lobby when she was getting their rooms, and when they both entered the same room, he didn't think anything of it because he was trying to catch his breath, and then got too distracted by the conversation to notice.   
  
When she sat down, the mattress shifted to accommodate for her weight, he winced, and put his hands on his chest and stomach. She started moving again, but towards him this time and he looked a little hesitant when she and sat cross legged and lifted her hands from the bed and reached towards him.   
  
"Don't look at me like that. I'm going to heal you, yeah. I, uh....." she trailed off barely mumbling something sounding vaguely like an apology for not healing him earlier, before finally losing her patience with herself and gently moving his hands off himself and replacing them with her own and sending a few preliminary pulses of chakra into him to assess the damage.  
  
"I'm going to need you to remove your shirt so there's no interference, are you going to need help doing it?" he nodded in assent and she helped him to sit up just enough so she could gently and quickly pull the shirt over his head, before helping him lay back down again, with a pillow underneath him so he could sit up a little.  
  
She looked down at his torso, where various bruises were already flaring up angrily and bit back a growl that she wasn't able to reign in her temper enough and therefore mustn't have channelled enough chakra away from her hand so that she didn't do this much damage. Her hands glowed light green and she moved them carefully over his stomach and his chest, fixing his broken ribs, and getting rid of the bruises she left in a matter of minutes. After she finished, she looked at his face and noticed his eyes were closed. He didn't look like he was barely holding back groans of pain any more. He opened his eyes to see her looking down at him, with an oddly piercing look in her eyes.   
  
"How does it feel now?" she asked quietly, and gave him a barely there, almost apologetic smile.  
  
"It's perfectly fine now. Thanks...I guess. Not for beating me up, but for at least healing me after beating me up." he said with a small ironic chuckle.  
  
"I'm not sorry for beating you up Deidara. You deserved that. I'm only sorry that I allowed the possibility for the damage to increase by not healing you straight after, which would then create even more work for me, yeah" she retorted a-matter-of-factly.  
  
"I figured that. I'm sure you wouldn't go to all the effort of taking me out to the forest to do that for no reason, yeah. Actually, now that I think about it, how did we get back here?" he said the former half like it was as obvious as him having blond hair, whilst the latter half took a more curious tone to it.  
  
"I carried you. It would have looked really quite amusing from an outside perspective. A very backwards scene indeed." she said with a small smirk on her face and huffed slightly in amusement.  
  
He laughed a little at the mental image that her words invoked, before he looked down as his gaze turned inward and his expression went from ironically amused to puzzled. She knew it was coming before he even looked back at her and inhaled before he spoke.  
  
"So, why exactly did you call me an arrogant fool, if I remember correctly, then kick my ass?" he asked, holding her gaze firmly, and waiting for her explanation.  
  
"Because it was your punishment for your own arrogance, lack of knowledge and underestimation of your opponent that eventually caused you to become an unwilling member of the most well known criminal organisation and unquestionably become an enemy to basically every shinobi village that exists. And I know that you would dislike the idea of being oppressed in any way, but as I said, it was your arrogance and lack of knowledge that got you into the situation"  
  
He looked at her as if he was going to take advantage of her current honesty and ask her a million other things. But she got in before him.  
  
"Anyway, it's rather late, so we should get some sleep if we're going to have the stamina to our destination before dark tomorrow" she moved away from him and got off the bed before moving toward the front of the room and turning the light then coming back and getting under the covers and muttering a good night and he did the same before he got under the covers and attempted to sleep....which failed....  
  
 _Miserably._  
  
He couldn't help but think about her deliberately cutting him off before he even started to try and ask her the same question he had asked when they were both standing out the front of her place getting ready to leave earlier that day. The memory flashed before his eyes.  
  
\---  
  
 _"Hitori....what happened after we were separated?" He asked hesitantly, and looked up at her with curious and piercing blue eyes, and she looked right back with pale grey eyes that spoke volumes of what happened. She quickly composed herself and spoke after a few minutes of silently battling inwardly about whether to tell him, and having a staring battle with him to try and get her to tell him all that happened in the years they'd been apart._  
  
\---  
  
As he tried his hardest not to sigh, he realised he should probably have a shower since he hadn't had one since about an hour before he was reunited with Hitori, which was.....ages ago. Suddenly realising how bad that was and he mentally scolded himself for his lack of personal hygiene as he got up as carefully as he could, even though he figured Hitori probably wasn't asleep yet, or even close to it, knowing her and her insomnia and headed off into the bathroom and shut the door behind him.   
  
When he was actually in the shower, he tried to forget about Hitori completely stopping him from asking her what happened after...that day. He tried to do that by thinking about what has changed about her, and what hasn't. He can tell how much shorter her temper has gotten over the years. It's just as short, if not more so than his. That's what happens when you have people coming after the bounty that's on your head and the even more so the glory of killing you, which usually barely ever happens for shinobi of their calibre unless there's nothing short of a four strong cell of jounin, and even then, the power gap between an everyday jounin and an S-class shinobi is fairly large. Especially a missing-nin, who's also a member of the Akatsuki. You get used to fighting people off, and escaping with usually only minor injuries.   
  
He started to wonder where she learnt medical jutsu, and the katon jutsu she used was worthy of praise from an Uchiha.  
  
 _Did she go to a hidden village? But if she did, why didn't she stay there? She couldn't have possibly taught herself all that. I mean, shit. She's a real fast learner and really smart, always was, but it's not like she could teach herself medical jutsu. As far as I know, that shit takes ages to learn. If I ask her about it, that would still technically be bringing up the past that she seems to so desperately want to avoid discussing. I'm just going to have to put her in a situation where she has to answer me and be honest with me. I don't want to press her into it, but it's really starting to get on my nerves that she doesn't even bother saying "I don't really want to talk about it just yet" or something similar. She just ignores it completely._    
  
He flinched and snapped his head towards the door when he heard a faint knocking on the bathroom door over the sound of the water from the shower.   
  
"Deidara, is everything okay? Don't tell me you somehow managed to pass out and split your head open in the shower"  
  
"Nah, I'm fine. Just got a little caught up in, my..uh, thoughts."  
  
"Good, because I was seriously considering leaving you there 'til morning if you did actually pass out and split your head open, yeah." she replied, the sound of her voice dripping with sarcasm yet a bit of seriousness as well, sounding slightly muffled through the door.  
  
"Ha ha ha. Very funny. Go back to bed, yeah. I'll be out in a minute." he retorted sarcastically, while shaking his head in silent laughter.  
  
"Alright then. Oyasumi."  
  
"Oyasumi Hitori."  
  
Deidara turned off the water, and sighed before getting out of the shower and started to dry himself off.  
  
 _I guess we'll just have to wait and see._  
  
\--------------------------  
  
Deidara woke up the next morning in the moderately comfortable bed and when he was awake enough, he became a little confused at the feeling of warmth on his left. He drowsily turns his head and slowly opens his eyes, and blinking them a few times to adjust them to being open. He notices that the source of warmth is actually Hitori, who is curled rather close to him.  _Che, she must have moved in her sleep._  
  
Well, that's at least what he was thinking before rolling over a little, so as to not wake her, and realising that the other side of the bed looked almost completely unused. The side of the bed he was supposed to be sleeping on.  _Shit, I must have moved closer to her in my sleep. So technically, I'm curled against her. That's pretty embarrassing. Ex-Akatsuki member and terrorist bomber, Deidara, curled up near his childhood friend while he slept. I just hope that she's actually asleep for once or I probably won't have my head sitting on top of my shoulders for much longer._  
  
Said girl began to stir as Deidara stealthily tried to move away so that she wouldn't know that he had moved closer to her in his sleep. Although, he doubted that he could move so little as turning his head without her waking up. Damn light sleeper. He thought to himself as he slowly and carefully got out of the bed and moved over to the table over the other side of the room and quickly grabbing his clothes and heading for the bathroom, even though he probably only showered about a maximum of 8 hours ago, it was more of an excuse to get the hell out of there before she woke up and punched him through the closest wall for sleeping so close to her.  
  
Only when Hitori heard the sound of the bathroom door shutting, did she open her eyes. She woke up as soon as he started shifting, and even in her still-dead-to-the-world state (She is  _not_  a morning person) she could figure out that Deidara was a lot closer than he was when they both (eventually) fell asleep. She doubted that she moved because she was still on the same side of the bed as she was before, and he couldn't have physically moved her without waking her up the moment he laid a finger on her. And then she might have accidentally broken his neck out of sheer instinct. She could also feel the the residual warmth from where he was laying next to her before. She doesn't really know whether to find it endearing that he moved closer to her in his sleep, and it actually requires a vigorous shake of the head for her to dispel such ridiculous thoughts. She also bit back a laugh when she realised that he probably went to the bathroom to shower for the sole reason of getting away from her, therefore meaning that he was embarrassed. She came extremely close to cracking up laughing at the thought.  
  
 _Ah, he must be going soft or something, or maybe after last night's....uh...incident, he's probably realised my temper is_ much _shorter than it used to be, and my wrath is particularly more violent as well. Feels like the old days all over again. Deidara does something stupid without thinking, I get pissed off at him and usually end up punching him (taking note of the fact that my punches now are quite deadly, instead of just giving him a dead arm) and then he does something that would normally be considered out of character. Predictable in an unpredictable way, which makes_  so  _much sense..._  
  
Hitori then realised how long she'd been just laying there thinking when she heard the sudden cessation of the shower in the background. She decided to quickly get up and throw her clothes on, hopefully before he came out, leaving the shirt and boxers she borrowed from him splayed on the ground next to her. Unfortunately she wasn't quick enough, and was just pulling her shirt over her head as Deidara opened the bathroom door and stepped out, most likely expecting her to still be asleep, or at least in bed. She had to bite her lip rather hard so that she wouldn't laugh as she heard his breath hitch a little when he must have noticed her over the other side of the room. He vaguely murmured his apology, without even being able to hide the embarrassment clearly visible in his voice. She finished dressing and put the clothes on the table next to his pack then turned around and sat on the bed and watched him while Deidara walked over to his pack and getting his things together and picking up the clothes Hitori borrowed off the table and inwardly telling himself over and over again like a mantra to not smell them. He just wondered if her scent had changed at all.  _Yeah...that's it. Nothing perverted. Nothing perverted at all._  She'd break both his legs and maybe his arms too without a second thought and probably call him a pervert or something as well. He did the simple hand seals in quick succession and his pack disappeared.   
  
He went over to the other pack that had food packed in it and got out two apples for them both to eat before they checked out and started travelling again. She murmured her thanks to him when he handed the apple to her, before eating it quickly while putting the things back in her pack that she didn't put back in last night and when they were ready, they both set off out of the room and down the stairs before dropping off the key, which Hitori slid across the table, partially concealing the small, but compensating amount of money for the discretion that they were never there, as well as an intimidating cold glare, which made the man at the reception pale. Even though any decent shinobi, medical nin in particular, could get answers from him, it usually always helped. When they arrived at the edge of the village, they quickly glanced at each other, before moving along into the forest....again.  
  
 _Argh, we haven't said a word to each other all morning. It's really getting on my nerves. What am I supposed to say to her? If I ask her about what happened in the past she'll probably end up cutting me to shreds with that huge katana of hers. I'm surprised she's able to wield that damn thing since she is quite petite. But maybe I'll just have to wait for this whole situation to sink in, if it is actually real that is, until I'll be able to figure out exactly what the fuck to do about -..._  
  
"Oi, pay attention to what's going on. Baka! I could have thrown a kunai at your head and you probably wouldn't have noticed! There's a village up ahead and we're stopping there to get some supplies, yeah" Hitori said irritably and smacked Deidara upside the head before pointing to the village.  
  
"Ouch! Did you have to hit me, bitch?!" Deidara exclaimed while rubbing the side of his head where Hitori hit him, and he stopped his soothing motions when he glanced over at her and could swear he saw a vein in her head pop, before she swiftly reached out in the middle of leaping to the next branch and shoved him roughly straight into a tree about a yard or two away.  _Hard._  
  
"What the fuck Hitori?! You're lucky I don't kill you for that right here, right now, yeah!!!" Deidara yelled at her as he recovered from the unexpected attack, and she continued on her merry little way, as if nothing happened, before stopping all of a sudden and looking back at him with a blank expression.  
  
"I wonder if you could...Deidara" she turned her back to him, and leapt to the next branch casually.  
  
 _God, that fucking hurt. I'm so going to get her back for that. What I don't understand is how she could what she said with no hint of arrogance at all. She just said it as if it was a completely logical thought. I wouldn't be surprised if she was easily an S-class ninja, but still....just how strong has she become?_  
  
Deidara was broken out of his thoughts again when he realised that they were just about to come out of the trees and enter the village. When they were there, they went to a few various shops, picking up food to last them about a week or so, before getting an early dinner of shrimp tempura at the cleanest looking stall. Deidara still had no idea where they were, and he figured that asking Hitori wasn't necessary since she said last night that if they made good time they would most likely reach - where ever they were going – very soon.  
  
Hitori made her way over to Deidara who was looking at a small stall with various random knick-knacks and when she got his attention, she tilted her head to the side as if to say that they were leaving. They walked through the rest of the village that was slightly larger than the one they were in yesterday and continued into the trees before picking up the pace.   
  
About an hour later, they slowed their pace and arrived in a fairly large clearing that was mostly hidden by several abnormally large trees on one side and a few very large rocks on the adjacent side. Deidara figured that it was the kind of place that most people would go right past, since it was quite naturally hidden.   
  
Hitori jumped down from the tree branch she was perched on, and stood still as she looked around cautiously, making sure that there was no one else there. When she couldn't sense any other presences, she motioned for Deidara to join her in the clearing, and watched silently as he also leapt down from the tree branch. She walked to the other side of the clearing, and Deidara watched slightly confused as she stepped on various the ground, some places a little harder than others and inspected the area rather closely. She then took off her pack, and unhooked the scroll from it before carelessly flinging her pack in his direction and he caught it with a thud and a grunt of pain as something hard and slightly pointy inside it impacted with his stomach.  
  
She set the scroll down and unrolled it and bit down on her thumb hard enough to draw blood and smeared it across the scroll and doing several hand seals before placing her hands on the ground and the familiar seal that appeared on the ground that was on the door when she used the other half of the jutsu and the small, but comfortable sized house appeared in front of them. Hitori turned to Deidara, and with a mischievous look on her face opened the door and spoke.  
  
"Ladies first" she teased, trying to hold back a laugh.  
  
"Then off you go,  _woman_ " Deidara countered, also doing his very best to try to hold back the laugh that was threatening to escape his throat.   
  
They both playfully glared at each other, smirks growing wider and wider by the second and quickly turning into barely restrained laughter and then they both cracked, laughing for the next minute or so before they pulled themselves together and chuckled a little more as Hitori entered first.  
  
Deidara stopped just inside the door and shut it behind him as he realised that Hitori actually  _laughed_  in front of him. It wasn't one of those slight huffs of amusement, or a tiny, barely showing smirk. Full on laughter. His grin went from playful to happy, and his eyes softened as Hitori slumped herself over the small couch in the makeshift kitchen/dining room/living room.   
  
He followed her over and tilted his head to the side to indicate for her to move over. She reluctantly shifted over to make room for him with a disgruntled groan. He plopped himself down on the surprisingly comfortable couch. They laid in silence for at least 10 minutes, shifting to a more comfortable position occasionally. Deidara decided to take a risk and turned to the side and put his feet up over the armrest and laid down and gently put his head in Hitori's lap. She showed no obvious signs of discomfort or making any attempt to push him off, so he snuggled himself in, almost like a cat, careful to avoid the kunai that were fastened in her leg holster, and carefully putting his arm over the other side of her legs and the other around in between her and the back of the couch.   
  
He sighed quietly in contentment, and had to hold back what could have been a moan and unconsciously tightened his grip on her, when her hand started to gently rake through his long blond hair. It was then that it started to sink in what had happened since he saw her standing in the tree since what felt like hours ago. He realised how quickly he faked his own death to get out of the Akatsuki and ran away with her without a second thought. It's not that he regretted it, he didn't like being stuck in the Akatsuki. It was just as Hitori said, he's not the type of person to take too kindly to being oppressed in any way. If he defected, he would have only gotten hunted down and killed, and he wasn't too interested in that happening. Hunter nins and bounty hunters were one thing, but having the Akatsuki trying to hunt you down would be a whole new story entirely.   
  
Meanwhile, Hitori's thoughts were running along similar tracks. She was quite surprised that Deidara up and left the Akatsuki without a word of protest. She knew that he would love being out of it, but also hating the possibility that his survival could be discovered, which would mean hell for the both of them. The prospect of fighting off however many members of the Akatsuki were left now was not a pretty one, and would undoubtedly cease with endless amounts of bloodshed. She was happy to have her childhood friend back, even though he was much more cruel and sadistic than before, but she knew that being a missing nin as well as being a member of the most infamous criminal organisation would do that to you. She also had the feeling that he would ask her about the past again soon. Even though it would be rather unpleasant to relive it all, she knew that she wouldn't be able to keep hiding it, or he'd just find some way of discovering it himself.   
  
They're thoughts slowly drowned away as they both fell into a comfortable and contented slumber.


	5. Chapter 5 - Memories and Rain

**Chapter 5 – Memories And Rain**  
  
Deidara woke up several hours later when everything was dark, aside from a small light from a lamp that was obviously left on somehow, and he noticed that it was raining slightly. He hadn't moved from his spot of laying his head on Hitori's lap with his arms hanging loosely around her small form, and her hand still hadn't moved from it's position either, tangled gently in his hair.  
  
He shifted his head slightly, and looked over to the small, failed attempt at a kitchen and he thought that in the dim light, next to a few kunai spread carelessly on the kitchen counter, he could vaguely make out a hitai-ate. With a Konoha symbol. That was scratched out.  
  
 _Scratched out hitai-ate from Konoha? What the fuck?...._  
  
He decided that he couldn't hold it off any longer. He was going to ask her now. When he went to move to a better position, she stirred (just as he expected) and she growled her dissatisfaction of being woken up, but quickly went quiet when Deidara unconsciously snuggled closer to her, almost in apology for waking her. He figured that now would be a good time to speak, before she was awake and alert enough to somehow strangle him with his own hair for waking her up to do such a 'trivial' thing. Normally, he would have laughed at the mental picture his thoughts provoked if he didn't seriously think that she would find a way to do it if he pissed her off enough. He cleared his throat and took a deep breath in preparation.  
  
"Hitori, I'm sorry for asking now, but I noticed the hitai-ate on the counter, yeah. There's a Konoha symbol, but it's scratched out. And please don't strangle me with my own hair for asking this again, but I've got to know....what happened in these past 8 or 9 years? I just want to know what you went through" he almost unconsciously cringed when she growled low in her throat in obvious frustration at his question.  
  
"I wouldn't say that if I were you. You've just given me another idea on how to kill you if you piss me off enough, yeah." she said slightly raspily and they both huffed gently in amusement, "I know I'm going to have to tell you sometime, so now will have to suffice I guess. I'm only going to go through the whole thing once, so you better pay attention", she lowered her head enough to glare at him in warning and he gave a small nod, and watched her intently as he waited anxiously for her to fill in the gaps of the story he'd been trying to fill ever since they were separated.  
  
"Well, we always promised each other to become ninja, so that's exactly what I set out to do, yeah. I had to figure out what hidden village to go to, since I knew that I couldn't become a decent enough shinobi by teaching myself. I only knew of Iwa, Suna, Konoha, Kumo, and Kiri. I definitely wasn't going to Iwagakure since that would be completely counter-intuitive to you letting them take you there, and leave me, even though I knew that would be the quickest way to see you again and know that you were safe, and you'd probably be really pissed off if I did that. So that was out. I had no fucking clue where Suna or Kumo was exactly, only that the Land Of Wind is mostly made up of deserts and Kumo is high in the mountains, and I knew that Kiri was across the ocean which would make it incredibly difficult to get to, but I didn't really like the sound of it anyway. Especially when it was nicknamed Chigiri no Sato. So, that left Konoha. I figured that from what we'd heard about it over the years that they would probably take me in, and I wasn't going to give up on the possibility that they might not. I didn't know exactly where it was, or how I was going to find out it's location, I guess that I just kind of hoped that I'd stumble upon it by luck and become a kick-ass shinobi, get you back somehow, then everything would be fine and fucking dandy, yeah." she snickered slightly and turned her head to look at him when he spoke.  
  
"That was a good choice, heading for Konoha, yeah. Pretty smart thinking I'd say" Deidara said in slight awe of the logic that the girl sitting with him made that decision based upon when she was probably only 11 or 12 years old. Hitori smiled a little and continued on.  
  
"After wandering for a while, I ended up coming across a small village a fair distance inside of the border of Land Of Fire. Keep in mind, that I had no clue where I was exactly and when I asked someone where I was, I bet you can imagine my reaction when I found out that I was in Land Of Fire, let alone the fact that I had been for a while now, yeah." she laughed a little and shook her head at the memory of being told that she was closer to her destination.  
  
"I kept walking through the town, and noticed a man wearing clothes that looked like something a shinobi would wear. I walked a little closer to him, and the instant I saw the symbol on his hitai-ate, I swear I nearly passed out. He was a Konoha shinobi. I collected myself and basically ran up to him, and I could barely speak I was in so much shock. I still didn't even know if he would allow me to go back with him or not, but I didn't care less either way. I would have probably ended up pestering him until he did agree to take me to Konoha anyway" she continued on as she gently unlinked Deidara's arms from around her, lifted his head, and got up and headed toward the kitchen.  
  
"I asked him if he really was from Konoha, and when he said that he was, I couldn't help but almost dance around in joy. He looked pretty surprised and confused...well, as confused as he could look with basically only a quarter of his face showing."  
  
That description rang familiar in Deidara's head, and he had a feeling of what was coming up next in this epic tale of events.  
  
"He asked me why I wanted to know if he was from Konoha, and I told him that I wanted to go there and become a ninja. I don't really know how, but he managed to look even more shocked at that point of the conversation, yeah. We started to walk again, away from the more crowded areas of the village, and he asked me why I wanted to become a shinobi, when I clearly didn't come from a hidden village. I gave him the most simple explanation I could without revealing too much. I said that I had promised a friend that I would. He eventually said that I could go with him, since he was heading back home after a mission anyway, and I can't even describe how happy that made me, yeah." she said, with a small chuckle at the end and a small grin.  
  
While she was talking, she made tea for them both, and came back to sit down and had to stifle a giggle when she noticed that Deidara basically hadn't moved from his original position, and the only thing missing in the equation was her sitting at one end of the couch, so she put down her mug on the small coffee table and gestured for Deidara to sit up, which he did reluctantly before handing him his mug and sitting down herself. He smirked at her lazily in thanks, and she realised how much she missed that smirk that always told her that he felt pretty damn content right now. She went to start talking again, but paused as the rain outside suddenly got a lot heavier.  
  
"On the way back he told me that his name was Hatake Kakashi, and we had heard that name a few times before, and usually in the same sentence as the nickname 'The Copy Ninja' or something to do with the Sharingan. I'm pretty sure my eyes were as wide as saucers when I realised exactly  _who_  I was talking to, yeah. He told me a little bit about the system that Konoha had with their shinobi, and said that I should probably start out in the academy and that he had a feeling I'd do pretty well since I seemed to be keeping up with his moderate pace quite easily even though I clearly didn't have any prior training. When we finally got there, we went to the Sandaime Hokage and he helped me figure out where I would live, and when I would enter the academy. He seemed to take a bit of shine to me and my tenacity to become a shinobi. At first, he told me I should just wait until the next semester, but I wasn't having that, yeah. I knew I didn't have time to sit around and wait a few months for the next semester to start, since most kids my age were already genin. He was such a kind old man, and thought my determination was pretty impressive, so he decided to let me start the next Monday. I was put in a first year class, and most of the kids thought it was really weird that I was so much older than them. I didn't get how the kunoichi class was full of girly things, so I just didn't bother with most of it, and went off by myself and trained with a kunai, or something like that which never failed to piss of the sensei."  
  
She paused for a few moments to drink some of her tea, and Deidara noticed that she seemed to be reliving the whole experience in her mind like it all happened just yesterday. He still had a score to settle with the Copy Ninja, and him being mentioned was a reminder of that, but it was an easy task for him to reign in his temper around her.  
  
"The senseis always tried to get me to participate in the activities they did, but I only did that when I absolutely had to. Eventually, I got fed up, and went to the Sandaime, insisting that he either put me in the boy's class, or let me pass the first year. Obviously he wasn't going to put me in the boy's class since that would just be way too odd, so he let me pass the first year after my senseis said that I could perform the skills required to pass. When I went up another year, it started out nearly exactly the same as the first-year, so I waited to see if it changed, and when I realised that it wouldn't change, I went back to the Sandaime again, for the exact same purpose as last time, but only demanded that he let me pass the second year, since I knew he wouldn't put me in the boy's class. And this process continuted until we finally started having co-ed classes, because we finally started learning more practical skills instead of flower-arranging, and all that bullshit that nearly made me gag, yeah. The Sandaime thought it was pretty funny when I said that to him."  
  
She quietly finished her tea with a small wistful smile on her face, which made Deidara's eyes soften at the sight of it, and when he had also finished his, so he got up and took both the mugs and put them in the sink, and came and sat back down, and waited for her to continue. He figured that she probably hadn't talked this much in the past few years combined.  
  
"Anyway, he was really impressed with how quick I was going through the academy, and I ended up gradutating about a year and a half after I first entered. I didn't realise that was a really rare and impressive occurance until Kakashi told me that barely anyone goes through it that quick. Iruka-sensei taught the sixth-year class, and he said that I was pretty good with chakra control, so somehow after I graduated, instead of joining a team, I was immediately taught medical jutsu." she said with a slight hint of smugness, before her expression quickly turned a little more serious.  
  
"No one asked me whether I wanted to learn medical jutsu, but it seemed that I didn't really have much of a choice in the matter. I wanted to get through it as quick as I could, so I mastered all the medical techniques I could, and I specialised in poision making and antidotes, and quite oftenly made poisons for various shinobi in the village. It took me about a week after I'd finished my medical training to finally convince Kakashi to teach me ninjutsu, and I soon found out that he could be a bit of a hardass sensei when he wanted to be, yeah. In our first training session, we just started off just sparring, so he could figure out where I was at. He was a bit shocked when I used my jutsu, which I'd been slowly gaining more and more experience and talent with, and he eventually helped me master it. When the next chunin exams came around a few months later, Kakashi and I had already gone on a few A-rank missions together, and a lot of C-ranks. I was quickly becoming better than some of the shinobi who were already chunin, and Kakashi actually had to use his Sharingan once when we were training together, which may I say, I was  _damn_  proud of, yeah." she finished with a smug look in her eye and a small grin present on her face.  
  
"I have to say, I'm impressed by that, yeah. I know that guy is incredibly strong" Deidara said, also quite proud of what Hitori achieved at such a young age, but the mental image of the Copy Ninja 'disposing' of his arm was threatening to push it's way to the front of his mind and release the now strangle-hold he had on his anger.  
  
"Damn right he is. It took me ages to stand on equal ground with him, yeah." Deidara's eyes went wide at this statement, and Hitori realised that he must have been shocked to hear her say that she, at the least, can stand on equal ground as the great 'Copy Ninja', Hatake Kakashi, as well as the slight incinuation that she may actually be stronger than him. She merely raised one brow in reply, and continued to speak.  
  
"We realised that I didn't have a team to go through the chunin exams with, and so I plodded off to the Sandaime to tell him to figure something out, because, I quote "Kakashi told me that I have the strength of a moderately-experienced chunin, so I want my proper rank, yeah"." She said with a small laugh.  
  
"He eventually convinced me that if I waited until the next one came around, he would let me enter them by myself, without a team. I had no idea why he said that, but it definitely stroked my ego that he was confident enough that I could do that, so I agreed, if a little reluctantly that I'd have to wait so long, and when the chunin exams came around again, I went back to him to make sure that the old bastard hadn't forgotten what he said to me. He hadn't, so I entered them by myself, as planned." she spoke with a hint of amusement, and Deidara figured that she had a lot of respect for the Sandaime as well as Kakashi.  
  
"I passed with flying colours so to speak, excelling in the one-on-one combat that was in the second and third round. I soon found out why he told me to wait, and it was because he wanted me to try and take the jonin exams which were coming up only a month after the chunin exams. I was pretty confident that I'd go alright but I didn't expect that I would pass since I had only became a chunin a while ago, even if I did pass easily enough, and you and I both know, that the lifestyle we had, we  _never_  expected anything just in case we didn't get it. I really don't know how I did it, but I managed to pass, even though it was kind of hard. I started getting sent on more and more A-rank missions, and the rare S-rank mission and started doing less and less of them with Kakashi." she took a deep breath and ran her hands through the shorter part of her hair, almost in preparation for the next part of the life story she was recalling.  
  
"Then....I got offered to go to the ANBU all of a sudden. I was making a pretty decent name for myself around the village, so I shouldn't have been too surprised, but it was quite...unexpected. Two ANBU showed up at my doorstep at about 7am in the morning saying that I had to go see the Sandaime, who I had no qualms about telling the old guy off for making me get up so damn early the day after a mission. I still didn't know that much about a lot of the village workings, so I was pretty clueless about ANBU at that point aside from knowing that Kakashi was pretty famous among the ANBU ranks, so the Sandaime explained the vague gist of it to me. I had a revelation at that point. The ANBU was  _exactly_  where I wanted to be if I wanted to come and get you. I wouldn't exist any longer in the village records, even though I barely did anyway, yeah. So I became the fourth member of Squad 9, and ended up becoming buntaicho after a while, when the guy that was buntaicho when I entered the squad died on the job. I become fairly well-known in the ANBU as being a captain who used complex strategies that always managed to work, and I always got the job done......I fucking hated it. And I hated that I was so well suited for it even more." she held her hand over half of face as she spoke.  
  
He noticed that she spoke with a lot more anger in her voice than before, and he realised, that while she could probably be pretty ruthless, that even in the end, she was still a human, and no matter who you were, doing some of the things that the ANBU do would effect you. He looked at her with a look in his eyes that said that he didn't like that she had to go through what she did, even if was exactly where she wanted to be.  
  
"Kakashi was pretty damn impressed with how quick I'd grown in such a short time and he had to start using his Sharingan quite often when we were sparring, even though most of the time I told him not to because I didn't want him collapsing from using it too much. After we had a training session together one day, he told me to go to the Sandaime's office. We had received a request for a mission that was so unranked that you could have cried or laughed or screamed in shock about what the person was asking, if you could actually believe it. It actually took me a few minutes to collect myself after the Sandaime told me what it was. I asked him, still trying to catch my breath after a minor laughing fit in disbelief over the whole thing, why he was telling me. He just looked at me seriously, and with as much reluctance as I've seen anyone show, he said that was asking me to take the mission, but considering the nature of it, he would allow me to say no, if I chose to." she spoke very seriously at this point, and Deidara already knew what was coming up next.  
  
"I knew that he was pretty upset to have to accept the mission and try and find a shinobi willing to complete it, but he told me that he was outnumbered by the village elders, just because of the sheer amount of money that we would get for even attempting to complete said mission. It was probably in the millions or billions, and we'd get triple the first given amount if we succeeded. I'm sure you could probably guess what it was." she looked up at him, and waited for reply whilst looking at the knowing expression on his face.  
  
"I knew it. You were asked to assissinate...the Tsuchikage. But that still doesn't explain why your hitai-ate is scratched out." he said with minor confusion. He had suspected that she was involved in that somehow when he heard about it, since Iwa had been attempting to hunt down someone know as the 'Kage Oni' even since that incident occured. And she was the only person he knew of with abilities that could apply to that title. She narrowed her eyes at him in irritation at his lack of common sense.  
  
"What if they managed to track me down back to Konoha? That would be instant war. You should know even better than me about the warmongering and militaristic nature of Iwa shinobi, the Tsuchikage in particular. They've always wanted to get a chance at Konoha. As an ANBU member, I wasn't on the village records any more. I had to become a missing-nin in case someone miraculously tracked me down, although I already planned to make sure that even if I got caught that they wouldn't get the chance to question me, if you get my meaning, yeah. And besides, I didn't give a shit about becoming a missing-nin. I was never planning on staying in the village and doing the ANBU shit and every A-rank and S-rank mission that was thrown my way. I wasn't interested in any of that. I just wanted to get back to how we were and fuck off all this shinobi shit.  _Then..._ " she turned to glare at him with cold murder in her eyes, and he  _may_  have actually flinched, even though he'd never admit it if he did and it seemed that she was too pissed off to notice, care, or bother bringing it up.  
  
"I heard you defected from Iwagakure, and a while later, started to prance around with those Akatsuki guys. It didn't surprise me that you left, in fact, I was pretty damn pleased that you did. But I'd already accepted the mission at that point, and I was planning to use that as a way to get you the hell out of there, but it seemed I was too late for that. And I figured that since you were in the Akatsuki there was nothing that I could do to get you out of there. So I gathered that you were fucked unless I somehow found a way to fake your death and drag your sorry ass back into the shadows with me. The Sandaime suggested that I leave in about a month, after doing a lot of heavy training in re-con, espionage and assassination. I ended up taking every single assassination mission that I physically could in that month, and I never failed one of them. My jutsu seemed to exist for the sole purpose of being used for assassination." she stopped for a moment and looked up at the ceiling of the jutsu-made house with resentment, as if cursing the gods.  
  
"I hated that I was so good at it. I was one of the village's youngest, yet one of the top assassins and I couldn't stand it. So eventually, I basically became a different person on the job. No emotion, no conscience. Just duty and determination to complete the mission no matter the cost. You saw a small taste of that side of me before I realised it was you the other day. But that's what I needed to be to complete the mission. I knew I would have to cut down anyone in my way to even have a slight chance of succeeding. The day finally came when I had to leave to make my way to Iwa, and probably wouldn't come back to the village even again. And if I did, it would most likely be in chakra sealing handcuffs. The Sandaime and I had it sorted so that when I left the village that would be it, yeah. I'd instantly become a missing-nin because my 'plans' for the Tsuchikage had been found out and I was supposed to be arrested, but before they could arrest me I fled the village. The ANBU and everyone else was put on strict orders to capture me back alive or let me go if they couldn't bring me back without killing me because I had classified information that was extremely important to Konoha and I couldn't be killed until they got their hands on it. Kakashi was undoubtedly able to put two and two together, since I have ran into him a few times over the past few years and we usually stopped off for dinner if we weren't busy and he seemed to show no confusion about it, or question me on it..." she trailed off as her gaze turned inward as if she was remembering those times. Her head snapped up and Deidara just raised an eyebrow at the random action.  
  
"By the way, I heard about the 'incident' between you and Kakashi and Naruto, the kyubi jinchuriki. I noticed the work his Mangekyou Sharingan technique Kamui did a real number on your arm. How the fuck did you manage to re-attach it? Was it Kakuzu's handiwork?" she asked him with a slight hint of sadistic amusement (which Deidara picked up on) even though she already assumed it was Kakuzu's doing. She couldn't think of anyone who could do that, and she already knew that it wasn't uncommon for Hidan to have his severed limbs re-attached by him.  
  
"Don't sound so sadistically amused by that. Yeah, it was Kakuzu. But the Zombie Twins are dead now, so I hope you can re-attach limbs" he answered with an sardonic chuckle at the end. Hitori laughed as well and smacked him upside the head playfully.  
  
"I may be an awesome medic ninja and everything, but if you hadn't noticed I'm not a zombie or a Jashinist. Moving on...I'm not sure who else knows that I'm the Kage Oni since I could count on two hands the amount of people who have seen my jutsu and lived, but as far as I know, no one aside Kakashi a few others, and you has figured out that the Kage Oni and Sokkenai Hitori are the same person. Even less people would know about my existence if I succeeded in my task of killing the Tsuchikage and gotten away. Well, I clearly got away which I admit had nothing to do with skill and everything to do with pure luck. When I got to Iwa, I just went into my work mode and found the Tsuchikage tower just by using a simple henge clone. I slipped in there and used my jutsu straight away, and concealed my chakra. I made my way up to his office, and I don't know how I didn't get caught, seriously. When I snuck inside his office, I just waited in the corner for what I thought would be the best chance to strike and hoping to kami that he wouldn't use his damn Jinton jutsu that I'd heard about. I knew this was going to be on a whole new level compared to any other assassinations that I'd done in the past. I wasn't just going up against anyone, this guy was a fucking Kage. I was still quite young, and he was getting pretty old. He was probably not as fast as he used to be, but the guy certainly still had some speed. And I wasn't in my prime either, I'm not even in it now. We fought for about 3 minutes flat, in his tiny little office space before 5 of his best jonin turned up just before I was able to pin him and finish the job. That was honestly the most insane experience of my life. I don't think anything even your battle with Gaara could compare. Just me, the Tsuchikage. Fighting for our lives in an office. We could barely use any ninjutsu because we may have ended up injuring ourselves as well. Any time before that, if I got stuck fighting in a tiny little clearing or something like that, I'd be pissed off. But ever since then have I never once complained about the terrain I get stuck with."  
  
"I wouldn't do too well against a Kage fighting in an office. Long range for me, thanks." Deidara admitted with a shake of his head.  
  
"Are you saying that you are a terrible close range fighter, hmm?" Hitori asked leaning closer towards him and looking at him mischievously.  
  
"I can certainly hold my own, it's just not as good as my long range fighting. I can't really use my jutsu at a close range unless I was going to blow myself up as well. And besides, where I lack in, you make up for. You probably have some of the best taijutsu I've seen, and you weren't even trying to kill me when I saw it. I could barely predict your movements. And now with the chakra boost that looks like that pink haired chick that killed Sasori technique, it's just even more insane. And I bet you are pretty good with that katana of yours, even though it's the biggest sword I've seen a female wielding." he said, with pride lacing his voice.  
  
"It is the same technique actually, I learnt it when I met Tsunade a while back before she became Hokage, yeah. It's quite a speciality of mine now. Maybe I'll teach you some of my taijutsu if your up for it. It would give us something to do. Maybe I'll even teach you to use a blade. And I don't mean a kunai, either." she gestured to the wall of the bedroom that they could see from where they were sitting, where several katana of various different sizes were hanging with a devious look in her eye.  
  
"I think I might take you up on that. It will certainly be good to see your skill. And you've got a fair collection there. But we've gotten off track, keep telling me about the mission." Deidara replied, but becoming a little more serious again when he realised they'd gone off track.  
  
"That's true. Anyway, when the five jonin turned up I just instantly used my jutsu to try and take them out before they could do anything, which didn't work unfortunately since somehow one of them managed to find me when a kunai that they were just flinging in every direction cut my leg. Just enough to spill blood. Then one of them used a Doton jutsu and basically crushed my left forearm, which I still have problems with occasionally." she subconsciously rubbed the area where her arm was crushed and ran her fingers over the pale scars that were barely visible any more thanks to her medical training.  
  
"I knew I'd be dead if I didn't get out of there as soon as possible, yeah. I used a Katon jutsu to create confusion and lower visibility, which worked just long enough for me to jump out the window, climb onto the roof, and get the fuck out of there as quick as I could. I knew that there was a big chance that I wouldn't survive against the Tsuchikage, but with five jonins as well, I was  _screwed_. Especially when I'd been fighting flat out for the past three minutes against Ryōtenbin no Ōnoki. I just barely got out of there and I knew that if I stopped  _anywhere_  in Land Of Earth, I'd be found. So I ran for ages, only able to keep going on adrenalin and willpower, until I got out of there. I ran through the countries that Takigakure is in and straight into Land Of Fire, yeah. I knew it was not the best of ideas since I could be caught really easily since I was still so weak and drained, but I knew that I wouldn't be killed, which was better than nothing." she shrugged indifferently and Deidara nodded in acceptance of her logic. She was right though. Even if someone from Konoha caught her in that situation, it would be difficult for her to fight them off, even more so when she wouldn't be able to kill them since she was still very loosely affiliated with them, so she probably would be taken back there.  
  
"When I had rested up enough to keep going, I headed for the Land of Rivers, which seemed to be a good place since it was a decent sized country with a decent economy and with no hidden village, even though it's directly between the Land of Fire and the Land Of Wind which both have one of the five biggest hidden villages. Konoha said that they had no idea who commissioned it, no matter how hard they tried to track them down, so they told me not to bother going back and trying again. I was given the scroll with this place sealed inside before I left Konoha so I just found the best area to set up in, and began my life as a missing nin. Even now, I still occasionally get a rare mission from Konoha, since I am in a way still allied with them. And I couldn't care less since it helps me support myself. They can track me through the house since it was created with a jutsu. They'd never be able to find me otherwise. And I get updates from Kakashi every now and then about what's going on in the world, which is how I found out about you and the Akatsuki shenanigans, yeah. That's pretty much it, I guess." she said with a shrug and began to wonder how long they had been talking for.  
  
"I'm sure you don't need to tell me about your life as a missing nin, yeah. My time as one would have been exactly the same, and when I was in the Akatsuki, I was hunted as a internationally wanted criminal, instead of just an S-class missing nin." Deidara offered with a slight grumble of irritation at the end.  
  
Hitori was about to speak again when there was a large rumble of thunder in the distance. They both stopped and looked off into space, listening to the sound of rain getting heavier, and turning toward each other when the thunder stopped.  
  
"Seems like there's going to be a bit of storm, yeah. Maybe we should just get something to eat, clean up and get some rest. I'm still a bit drained from running so damn much." she said, whilst getting up and heading to the kitchen again and began searching through the packs with the supplies in them that they had left on the counter.  
  
"Do you want first shower?" Deidara asked while summoning his pack and rummaging through it.  
  
"Uh, no. You go, I'll make dinner and have one after. There's towels on the rack, just use whatever one you want. And there's shampoo and all that kind of stuff in the shower." she said, slowly getting louder as Deidara made his way toward the bathroom, while getting some rice ready to be cooked.  
  
"Alright. Thanks. And dinner better be good, yeah. I'm feeling pretty hung – AH!" He exclaimed as he saw a chopstick go flying past his head which he barely dodged. He looked back to Hitori, who was barely repressing an evil smirk.  
  
"You'll get what you're given, bastard. I might decide not to feed you since you are basically  _free-loading_  off me" Hitori said deviously and narrowed her eyes at him, still trying desperately to repress the smirk, and turned back towards the kitchen counter and pretended to busy herself with dinner preparations until she heard Deidara laugh softly and shut the bathroom door.  
  
Around 20 minutes later, Deidara emerged from the bathroom, and instantly the smell of dinner hit his nostrils. Hitori was just serving up dinner, which was miso soup and sushi. He smiled and watched her intently for a few minutes before putting his dirty clothes over his pack, and walked over to her and put his hands on the counter on either side of her, and sat his chin on her shoulder and watched her serve up the food.  
  
"That looks and smells really nice, yeah. Oh, and speaking of that, can we get some other body wash that isn't so...girly? I don't think that maintaining my male image will work to well if I smell so....fruity...." he snorted in amusement, and laughed when he received a gentle, but still firm slap on the forehead.  
  
"Like I said before, you'll get what you're given. And that was the only decent stuff I could find the last time I needed to buy it. Here, go put these on the table. I'll fix us some juice to have. I usually don't get much in the way of drinks, aside alcohol." He raised his eyebrow at the last part and she handed him two plates and he took them and placed them down on the small table in the living room, and came back to get the two bowls of soup and placed them down as well and sat down. Hitori brought over two glasses of juice and sat them down on the table before sitting cross legged on the table. They barely spoke throughout dinner, mainly just Deidara just teasing Hitori that the food 'tasted like it had been dropped in the dirt' which granted him a punch to his arm which went so dead that he basically had to eat only using one hand.  
  
"That really hurt you know. I was only kidding, it's actually quite nice, yeah. You're a pretty decent cook. Better than me anyway." Deidara said while rubbing his arm and sitting back in the chair, feeling quite satisfied.  
  
"It was supposed to hurt, idiot. Next time I might just decide to aim it at your head. And I'm only good at this kind of basic stuff because that's what I usually eat unless I can't be bothered to cook and just go and get take-out from the closest village. Alright, I'm going to jump in the shower. And since I cooked...." she turned to look at him with sadistic amusement all over her face, "you clean up". She walked into her bedroom and grabbed a few clothes before heading into the bathroom and poking her tongue out at him as he sat on the couch glaring at her playfully and shaking his head.  
  
"Don't try that on me, you know I win by default!" he yelled after her as she shut the door.  
  
Hitori came out about 20 minutes later to find the dishes done, and Deidara sound asleep on the couch. She was going to tell him that they could share her bed since didn't have a problem with it since they'd done it nearly all the time when they found a bed to sleep on when they were kids.  _His loss_. She thought before grabbing an extra blanket from a draw and walking over to him, kneeling down and unfolding the blanket to put over him. When began to put the blanket over him, he stirred and groaned and shifted over closer to the back of the couch, and grabbed Hitori around the waist and pulling her onto the couch to lay in front of him. There was barely enough room for Deidara alone to sleep comfortably, let alone Hitori as well.  
  
"Deidara, we are not sleeping on the couch, seriously. Just get off your ass and we'll go sleep on my nice, warm, comfortable, bed that is  _big enough for the two of us_ " she said as she pulled Deidara's arm from around her and got up from the couch. He made the move to pull her down again, but she anticipated it, and instead used the opportunity to pick him up, and throw him over her shoulder and began walking towards the bedroom.  
  
While Deidara was slung over Hitori's shoulder, he opened his eyes to notice he was eye level with her rear end. She felt him tense and instantly knew why, but luckily they were already standing at the end of the bed. Hitori proceeded to chuck Deidara down and shook her head as he flopped down onto the bed like a rag-doll before walking over to her side and pulling down the covers. She lazily slid under them, and kicked Deidara in the side and told him to move and that she didn't know how he could have possibly gotten so incredibly tired in the 20 minute period that she was in the shower. He mumbled something about having a stomach full of good food made him feel drowsy, and he slowly shuffled further up on the bed and eventually got under the covers and settled down.  
  
 _I wouldn't be surprised if that adorable douche-bag was already asleep,_  she thought as she flicked off the bed side light and snuggled further into bed and eventually fell asleep for the second time that day to the sound of Deidara's even breathing and the rain outside.


	6. Chapter 6 - Embarrassment

**Chapter 6 - Embarrassment**  
  
 _The long blond-haired boy with the warm blue eyes looked up at the dark sky that was covered over with clouds that threatened to release a barrage of rain at any moment. Hitori's was also looking up at the sky with a contemplative expression.  
  
"Ne, Deidara, we should try and find some shelter since it looks like it's going to rain. We could go back to that village we walked through a little while ago and do the usual thing." Hitori said, still looking up at the overcast sky.  
  
"Yeah, sounds good. We can put my awesome plan to work yet again. What would you do without me, hmm?" he smirked in a cocky manner and yelped all of a sudden when Hitori smacked him upside the head.  
  
"What was that for?! God-damn, why do you always do that? I'm probably going to have brain damage from it!" he exclaimed, rubbing the sore spot on the back of his head with his arm while pointing at Hitori and glaring.  
  
"I don't think so. You've got too thick a head, yeah. Silly Deidara, without_ my  _jutsu, we would barely be able to eat! You are just the one who creates the distractions, not I need them..." she trailed off and dismissively waved her hand in his direction as if she was shooing a fly away.  
  
"You are really annoying and mean sometimes. Get over yourself Hitori, seriously!" he retorted a little loudly and started walking away from her, but stopped and turned around when he heard barely restrained laughter coming from his female companion. She cracked up instantly as soon as she saw his face.  
  
"You're telling_ me _to get over_  myself! _HA! Remember what you were saying about your plan earlier? You're so weird." Hitori laughed as she told him off and he knew that he probably looked rather embarrassed at the moment.  
  
She collected herself. "Come on you idiot. Let's get going, I just got a droplet of rain on my shoulder." she started towards the direction of the village that they had passed about a quarter of an hour ago, and shook her head and huffed in amusement as he mumbled and grumbled about her being annoying.  
  
"Yeah, yeah, whatever." he murmured while gradually falling into step with her.  
  
They walked in silence for the next fifteen minutes or so, before they entered the village again and began to look around for the inn. Lucky for them, the place was not too bad and they quickly went over the plan that he had come up with a while ago when the weather started to get colder, and it rained more often.  
  
As usual, he stealthily made his way into the lobby of the inn, and looked for any signs of staff. It was probably a little after 11pm and there was much less staff than there was before when they debated whether to stop for the night or not and glanced into the place before deciding that they would probably be fine. Apparently not.  
  
There was a cleaner walking up the stairs, and an older looking female at the reception._ Perfect, the older ladies always fall for it. _He gestured for Hitori, who was standing behind him, to go in and set things in motion. Giving him a brief nod, she took a deep breath and walked in, teary-eyed and sniffling, looking like the young child she actually was instead of her normal, mature-for-her-age side. She began to walk towards the desk and the woman immediately looked up from the paperwork she was doing and came out from behind the desk and began to coo softly to Hitori and ask her what was the matter. He vaguely heard Hitori saying that her and her cousin couldn't find their mother/aunt who hadn't come back when told them to wait outside the lobby while she quickly looked around for any other inns in the village. The receptionist seemed concerned for Hitori, and kept stroking her hair and then asked her where her cousin was. He knew this was his cue and he stuck his head just around the corner of the entrance to the lobby and Hitori turned around and pointed to him. He slowly walked in, and tried to look as sad as possible and stopped when he was standing next to Hitori and glanced at the receptionist then kept his eyes on his feet to make him seem shy.  
  
"So, what are your names? I might be able to let you stay here overnight and your okaa-san can pay the fee when she gets back. I wouldn't want you two standing outside all night. By the way, you can call me Koushi" Hitori looked up at the receptionist and nodded with her bottom lip sticking out.  
  
"I'm Hitori, and this is Deidara. I-I don't understand, okaa-san said she'd be right back." she sniffled and blinked a few times, "Wh-where did she go?" Hitori started 'crying' and put her face in her hands and Koushi just gently rubbed her upper arm and reassured her that everything would be alright. He just stood there quietly with his hands in his pockets and teary eyes and a trembling bottom lip and shuffling his feet a little.  
  
She looked at Hitori sympathetically. "Alright, Hitori, Deidara. I'll get one of the cleaners to fix you up a room that you can stay in, and I'll keep a look out for your okaa-san and your oba-san. What does she look like, so I'll know if it's her if I see her" she looked between them both.  
  
"She has black hair like me....but it's shorter. An-and pretty blue eyes." Hitori managed to get out between sniffles and sobs.  
  
She walked over to the staircase and yelled out to the cleaner they saw earlier to fix up the room at the top of the staircase immediately. She gestured for them to sit down on the couch over the other side of the lobby and told them that she would get some tissues and that she would be back in a moment, which Hitori seemed to think was justification enough to start sniffling and sobbing incoherently about her 'okaa-san' saying the same thing. The receptionist looked like she knew she was walking on eggshells and hesitantly zipped off to get the tissues.  
  
As soon as she had disappeared out the door behind the counter, Hitori stopped crying and looked up at him with a small, mischievous grin. Oh yeah, they were almost too good at this. He gently nudged Hitori when a minute later the door behind the counter opened, revealing Koushi holding some tissues and a small container which he inwardly hoped to kami that it was food. Hitori started sniffling a little and began wiping her 'tears' off her face with the backs of her hands as he just sat there and looked at Hitori with a worried expression.  
  
"Here's some tissues for you Hitori dear. And I brought you some of the leftover take-out that I had for dinner tonight." the cleaner appeared at the top of stairs and said that the room was ready and Koushi turned back to them. "Alright, I'll walk you to the room." Koushi stood up again and still holding the take-out container with a set of chopsticks in the other hand, she led them to the room at the top of the stairs and the cleaner smiled sadly at them when Koushi led them through the door.  
  
"You two just go right ahead and dig in to the food and you can have a shower too. You should try and get some rest as well. I'll come back later to check on you, okay?" Koushi smiled at them, put the food down on the small table and was just about to close the door when he stopped her by grabbing onto the bottom of her jacket. This was his time to shine. He looked up at her shyly.  
  
"...thank you...." he said so quietly that it was almost a whisper, and quickly released his hold on Koushi's jacket and looked back down at his feet.  
  
"That's alright sweetheart. I'll come check on you both in a while." she nodded and shut the door behind her.  
  
They just stood there and after a moment, they both sighed and he picked up the container of food and brought it over to the bed. They caught each other's eyes and had to stop themselves from laughing in case Koushi or the cleaner was still nearby.  
  
"I think that we are the smartest kids around, yeah." Hitori said quietly, but still displaying her cheerfulness at their plan succeeding. He muttered his confirmation while yawning and stretching tiredly. They both stilled when they heard the faint sound of rain hitting the window. He shrugged and opened the container and started eating.  
  
They ate in silence and they didn't speak again until he asked whether Hitori wanted first shower, which she agreed to and made her way in the bathroom and came back out again about 15 minutes later. He went into the bathroom after she came out, and showered and cleaned up and came back out to find Hitori sitting on the bed with her legs under the covers and her back against the wall. She gave him a small smile, one of the smiles that were more genuine than a huge ear-to-ear grin. He smiled back and came and sat down on the bed in the same position she was is.  
  
Since it was so quiet, they were able to hear the footsteps coming closer to the door of their room. They both instantly tensed, and looked towards the door. They heard a key slide slowly into the lock, and turned until there was a small click, signalling that the lock was open. He quickly glanced at Hitori, who gave him an almost imperceptible nod and he turned his head towards the door. Through a small gap in the door, eyes clearly belonging to Koushi peered in, widened slightly, then she opened the door fully and stood in the doorway.  
  
"It's getting late. You should get some sleep, dears. Don't worry, I'm sure everything will be fine. I'm just glad that you're both safe and out of the rain." she smiled kindly at them both. "I'll come get you immediately if something happens. Just get some sleep." Koushi said softly.  
  
They both nodded slowly, and slid further under the covers. "Oyasumi, Koushi-neesan. Thank you for everything," Hitori said drowsily. Koushi bid them goodnight and shut the door.  
  
"We probably should get some sleep. Just set the alarm clock on the table so we can ditch nice and early." Hitori said sleepily, slightly muffled from having the covers over a little of her face.  
  
"Hell no, I'm not getting up! Do it yourself!" he hissed at the back of her head. Hitori only replied by pulling the pillow out from under her head and thwacking him as hard as she could with it without moving too much. "Ugh, fine. I'll do it. Stubborn girl" he threw the covers back and went over to the table and set the alarm.  
  
He lazily dragged himself back over to the bed and picked up his pillow and attempted to get Hitori back for hitting him earlier. Hitori just stuck her arm out and blocked the hit, which earned a frustrated grumble from him and he decided against bothering to try again and instead just flopped down and settled in bed again.  
  
It was a while before either of them fell asleep..._  
  
\-----  
  
Deidara woke with a start. He shook his head and rubbed his face with his hands to wake himself up more.  _That was a pretty weird dream. I'd totally forgotten about us doing that._  He had occasionally dreamt about the things that Hitori and himself had gotten up to in the old days, but usually they weren't so vivid. He dragged himself out of bed and got dressed, and decided against putting on his hitai-ate, before stilling for a moment and listening to the faint sound of...singing? He set off to attempt to find the source of the music. He walked out of the bedroom and through the kitchen. Hitori was no where to be seen or found either, which made the whole situation more odd. The singing was gradually getting louder, and he decided to walk outside to see if it was coming from outside.  
  
When he opened the back door and stepped outside, the sounds got louder again, loud enough to be heard clearly. It was clearly a female singing, and she was pretty good too. He did a lap around the house to try and find where it was coming from. He got back to his original spot, and looked up, checking the trees for any sign of where the music was coming from. Then it struck him.  _The roof._  He leapt up onto the roof with ease and saw Hitori, sitting casually with a bottle of something next to her, and her back facing him. He certainly wasn't expecting it to be her that was singing, the thought hadn't even crossed his mind. The singing stopped instantly as Deidara landed on the roof and she turned her head just enough to look at him from the corner of her eye and turned back around.  
  
"Ohayo" he hesitated slightly coming to the conclusion that Hitori was singing, making him assume that it was sake in the bottle and that she was probably drunk. She regarded him with a sound of acknowledgement and a single wave of her hand out off to the side so that he could see it from where he was standing.  _I'm_ so  _busted. I didn't expect him to be up for another hour or so._  
  
"Want some?" she said picking up the sake bottle, and dangling it in the air, to try and change the subject that hadn't even been brought up yet, even though she knew that wouldn't help much with Deidara. He always spoke his mind.  
  
"Was that you...singing?" he walked over and sat beside her, before taking a small swig of the sake.  
  
She closed her eyes for a few moments,  _almost_  sighed and said "Who else could it have been, dumbass" she shook her head in 'frustration' to cover up her embarrassment. He just looked at her with a raised eyebrow and the corners of his mouth turned upwards slightly. He figured he'd probably embarrass her with what he was about to say, but he never bothered walking on eggshells around people. Her especially.  
  
"It sounded pretty good. But I have to wonder whether it's the sake that's getting to you enough for you to be singing. I've never heard you sing up until now" he said with a slightly mischievous tone.  
  
"Are you suggesting that I'm drunk, Deidara?" she bothered to turn her head and look him in the eyes when she said his name. His shadow of a smirk became a small grin and he huffed in amusement. Her expression mirrored his, yet a little less obviously and she huffed in amusement as well.  
  
Deidara leaned his head closer to her with a devious smile. "Maybe I am, yeah." he leaned back and took another mouthful of the sake before handing the bottle back to her, but never took his eyes off hers. Hitori narrowed her eyes slightly, and he noticed her gaze became incredibly piercing, as if she was looking straight through him. He could feel the slight change in her demeanour and wondered what was going through her head right now. He'd have no problem sleeping outside on the grass for the next week if it meant he knew what she was thinking. She was a lot harder to read now and he guessed that'd she just become that way over the years since most shinobi were pretty good at hiding their reactions, emotions and thoughts. _At least she's not like Itachi, that emotionless bastard._  
  
Meanwhile, Hitori was taking notice of how much he had grown. The softer, more boy-ish face that he used to have was long gone, and had been replaced with a thinner, finely structured face of a young man. Albeit, a young man with a touch of femininity, which she figured came from the long blond hair that most girls would probably kill to have. His eyes were still vaguely the same shape they used to be, just a little more refined. His soft looking, thin lips seemed to be always slightly turned upwards, as if he was always smirking. She mentally laughed a little and thought that was exactly like him. She realised that she actually found that he was rather attractive, which certainly took her off guard. She didn't exactly think that finding her childhood friend attractive was a good thing. _I'm a woman, I can still find him attractive even if we have known each other since way back when. It shouldn't matter._  Inwardly, she shook her head and sighed.  
  
Deidara didn't take his eyes off her and when he noticed her gaze on his mouth, he got a slight tingle in his chest, which caused him to frown fractionally before quickly composing himself again. Her gaze was still intense and he gave up on the idea of sleeping on the grass for a month just to know what was going through her mind fives minutes ago. He would gladly sleep in a bathtub filled with ice for a year to know what she was thinking right now. He also noticed how much her appearance had changed since they were pre-teens running around, causing havoc and trying to survive.  
  
Her face was refined and feminine, but she still looked like a bit of tomboy. She still had those same pale grey eyes, which he noticed looked a little more dull than he remembered, which were framed by long black eyelashes and she had emphasised her pale grey eyes with a light smudge of black eye-liner. Her cheek bones were set rather high on her face, that would in a certain light probably make her look a little gaunt. She still had that smooth looking, pale skin that contrasted with her black hair and her small, but full pink lips. He also realised that she had become pretty damn attractive, beautiful even. He almost found her more amazing than his art, and internally frowned in confusion at his thoughts. Sure, he found many other women attractive so it shouldn't bother him, even if she had a perfect figure, not too curvy, but not too straight-up-and-down either, and that shiny, waist length black hair that was undoubtedly as soft as it looked.  
  
You could only imagine their reaction if they  _did_  know what each other was thinking....  
  
The sound of a bird's call nearby broke them both of out their thoughts and both of them tensed, and snapped their heads in the direction of the sound before relaxing after they both realised it was just a bird. They were both too slightly embarrassed (even though neither of them would ever admit to it and they could both control their expressions enough to not show it) to look at each other after that, for fear of possibly revealing their thoughts to the other, and they just sat in silence, listening to the distant sounds of the wildlife around them and occasionally sipping the sake until it was empty.  
  
"I'll go and get another bottle, yeah." Hitori said before swiftly getting up and dropping off the roof, landing silently in front of the door. She walked inside and walked further into the kitchen and opened what she had affectionately deemed her 'Cupboard Of Certain Inebriation' which was packed full of bottles of various sizes and shapes that had come from all over. She looked at two different bottles, and decided on the one on the first shelf, and she picked it up and shut the cupboard door.  
  
She slowly made her way towards the door, and she was slightly concerned that it would still be awkward when she went back to the roof.  _Pfft, why worry about it. He didn't know what I was thinking. I shouldn't allow things to be awkward between us after we've just reunited._  She took a deep breath, and let it out before starting out the door, and leaping back up onto the roof. She opened the bottle, and smelt it and she smiled and exhaled satisfactorily before taking a large mouthful. She was about to take another mouthful when she heard a snort of amusement and barely restrained laughter beside her. She slowly turned her head towards the source, which was Deidara, who was shuddering with the effort of not cracking up laughing and had his hand over his mouth.  
  
"What the fuck is wrong with you? What's so damn funny?" Hitori asked, thoroughly confused by his sudden outburst.  
  
He collected himself after a few moments. "You're such an alcoholic Hitori" he said, still laughing, and he lost it and cracked up when he saw Hitori's utterly bewildered expression as if she was completely and thoroughly shocked by this comment.  
  
"Ah, screw you, bastard. You haven't even seen my cupboard full of bottles yet and you are already calling me a drunk. Isn't that a nice start to the god-damn day." she retorted with what looked like a scowl and a pout put together and crossed her arms and looked off into the distance resentfully. Inwardly, she was smiling that things were no longer awkward.  
  
"You have a cupboard full of bottles? Kami, I was even more right than I thought." Deidara said before laughing again at Hitori's expression, which with every passing moment turned into mock-anger, and she was clearly fighting off a smirk and laughter.  
  
He nudged her playfully and she cracked. They both sat there for the next few minutes laughing which slowly turned into the occasion chuckle, between them both taking sips of the sake. For at least the next half hour, they just sat there, occasionally talking about random things and making various passes at each other which usually ended in one of them laughing, while the other crossed their arms and mock-glared at the other, or Hitori smacking Deidara upside the head affectionately and calling him various names.  
  
After a few moments of silence, Deidara decided to say what he'd been thinking all morning.  
  
He smiled softly. "Ne, I'm pretty glad we met up with each other again, yeah. Much better than being stuck in the Akatsuki." he yawned while stretching his arms above his head.  
  
"Me too, yeah. Even though I bet you are going to be a pain in the ass." Hitori replied and giggled a little at him rolling his eyes.  
  
"You go under the same category then too. And you'll probably turn me into a drunk as well" Deidara retorted with a smug expression and a look of triumph in his eyes. Hitori just stuck her tongue out at him which he laughed at and held both his hands up beside his head and stuck out and wiggled  _all three tongues_  at her in retaliation.  
  
"You'll always lose on that front, yeah. I can do much more with three that you can with one." he looked at her with a suggestive glint in the eye that wasn't covered by his blond locks and she couldn't stop her jaw from dropping at the innuendo in his words. She turned away and he heard her muttering something about him being a complete pervert and he just laughed.  
  
He tilted his down a little. "Who said I was talking about anything like  _that_ , hmm? Your dirty mind just twisted it that way, yeah. I was just showing off my...artistic advantages." he said while chuckling at her being a little flustered at the current topic of conversation.  
  
"How could I not think of it like that? You said it with so much innuendo that I couldn't help it." she trailed off and he noticed that she must have turned away from him because from what he could see, her cheeks may be slightly more pink that the rest of her face.  
  
He leant forward and tried to look at her face. "Is someone blushing?".  
  
"Pfft, no.....idiot." She turned away further and leant forward so her hair would cover her face more and crossed her arms.  
  
"Why are you blushing? It's a normal thing for people to do, there's no need to be embarrassed. I'm just a little better...equipped..than most guys are. No one has ever complained about it before." he looked at her with an expression that would only be more smug if someone was complimenting his art.  
  
"I know it's a normal thing for people to do, yeah. And I'm not going to even comment on the other things you said. Let's just change the damn subject." Hitori said, still looking away and feeling a little mortified that they somehow got talking about this.  
  
Deidara just regarded her silently for a few moments with a slightly puzzled look, and she finally looked at him (after she got her blush under control, of course) and asked him what the problem was before he spoke.  
  
"Hitori, answer me honestly. Are you...a....virgin?" he asked a little hesitantly, but he was so curious that he couldn't not ask. He raised an eyebrow when she visibly tensed, and tried to blank her expression as much as possible, which failed and ended up looking like a mix of apathy and blatant shock.  
  
She shrugged a little and mumbled something incoherently and he leant forward as if to encourage her to speak up a little, which she did, but it was still just as incoherent as the first time.  
  
"What was that?" Deidara said quietly and could see her tensing even more.  
  
"...maybe..." she whispered so quietly that if he was sitting any further away, he wouldn't have heard her.  
  
He scratched the back of his head with a sheepish smile on his face. "Really? That's kind of surprising. I'm sure you would have at least kissed someone though.......right?" he added the last part after she didn't reply right away. She just put a hand over her face and sighed quietly, before repeating what she said before.  
  
"Are you kidding me? That does not make sense." his expression became more serious. "I have no idea why that is. You have become pretty attractive and everything, so I'm sure that someone would have been interested at the very least". He said with slight confusion in his voice.  
  
Hitori raised an eyebrow at his words. "....thank you....I guess" she said quietly, growing more shocked as his words sunk in further.  
  
"Don't thank me. I'm not complimenting you, just being honest, yeah." he said with maybe a little too much of a casual tone.  
  
Hitori didn't bother saying anything more as she figured that he actually might not have meant it in a complimentary manner, just speaking his mind as he quite often did. After a little more silence, they both agreed to go inside and make some lunch which was filled with more talking and laughing, and more various insults flung in both directions. She threw a chopstick at him (again) when he started to tease her about being a virgin. After they finished she suggested that they should go outside a spar a little, for something to do.  
  
Hitori went into her.... _their?_  room and got out a few kunai and shuriken for both of them to use out of her weaponry draw and handed some to Deidara before she fastened a few to her leg holster (which may have gotten a bit more of a passing glance from Deidara) and they strolled outside into the clearing and faced off with a few yards between them.  
  
"So, I'm thinking...no ninjutsu or genjutsu. No use of chakra at all. Just taijutsu. And we can use our kunai and shuriken, yeah." Hitori said while stretching her legs and arms a little and tilting her head to either side, which earned a few small cracks from her neck.  
  
"Alright then. I'll see how I match up against the Kage Oni in close to mid-range combat." Deidara said before going into a fighting stance and held her gaze.  
  
Hitori smirked. "Since I'm not using any chakra, I won't hold back on my speed or physical strength. Got it?" Deidara just nodded once and waited for her to move first.  
  
"I hope...that you can keep up with me" she said playfully while cracking her knuckles.  
  
"I hope so too" Deidara admitted with a soft laugh.  
  
Hitori disappeared and reappeared to his left and she continued to reappear in different places around him. He smirked when he realised that she was basically running in circles around him, and then out of nowhere she swung her arm out aiming to punch him. He only just blocked and attempted to counter, but she was just so fast that he could barely go on the offensive at all. She finally got one kick on him, which landed on his right side and the force pushed him a few feet away.  _Even without chakra, she's still so damn strong._  He thought as he pulled out a kunai and lunged at her with it.  
  
She blocked it with her own kunai and they grappled for a minute or so, just slowly circling each other. They both had a small smile on their face, and were both experiencing the thrill of the fight, even if they were only sparring. Hitori finally changed it up and threw a shuriken at him as fast as she could without enforcing it with chakra which he dodged easily and he threw one of his own, which she moved out of the way at the last second, as if to tease him. Deidara ran at her again, and began slashing with his kunai, and she blocked or dodged every one of them and then swung her left leg at him, to try and kick him or at the very least to make him dodge and force him to make an opening. Unfortunately it didn't work and he just jumped backwards out of her taijutsu range. Before he could recover, she flung the kunai she had in her hand at him and disappeared only to reappear on his right just after he dodged the kunai and was put slightly off balance. Perfect, she thought, before taking advantage of his opening and instead of punching him or kicking him, she just shoved him and laughed as he stumbled backwards, with a confused expression.  
  
"You're too slow. Although, I am rather impressed how well you did against me, even though if I did use any chakra in the kick that landed, I would have shattered your ribs." Hitori said a matter-of-factly and moved a few feet back away from him and stopped to let him recover before coming at him again and began a barrage of punches, kicks, elbows and knees. She noticed that he was able to keep up with her a little bit better now, and was even recognising a few of the moves that she purposely used again.  
  
They stopped after a few minutes for a quick break, and she talked him through a few things that he was doing wrong, and few things that she was quite impressed with. He took in everything that he could. She showed him a few tricks with kunai and shuriken that he never even knew about, probably because he didn't use them unless he had to, and she helped him improve his technique when he had figured out how to do them. He was a quick learner, so he was able to master a lot of the things she taught him and she could tell that he was rather proud of himself.  
  
Then they started doing some more taijutsu and he was able to react to her a little quicker, as well as do some offensive instead of just being stuck blocking and dodging most of the time. He almost landed a kick to her side at one point and when she dodged it, she looked at him with a proud smile and he just smirked and shrugged. She told him to sit down for a few minutes, and that she'd be back in moment and he just nodded and watched her jog into the house. When she came out again, about a minute later, she was carrying two wooden katana and two bottles of water. She handed him one of each and he looked at her incredulously and she just smirked and shrugged before drinking some of her water.  
  
They stood around for a few minutes, having some water, and preparing themselves for what was next. He had trained a little to use a katana, but he never bothered with it that much, so he never became that good at it. When Hitori was ready, she moved into the middle of the clearing again and waited for him to do the same. She ran him through a few basics before moving a few yards away from him. She made the first move, and limited herself to using basic swings that didn't have too much force or speed behind them. He was learning rather quickly with using the katana and she started to move a little quicker, which he noticed and countered it by moving quicker himself.  
  
By the end of their training/sparring session that lasted until late afternoon, he had increased his speed in taijutsu, as well as being a little better using kunai and shuriken and he had actually picked up using a katana rather well and was able to use a lot of basic swings with perfect execution. They went inside and slumped down on the couch before arguing who would get first shower. Not that either of them made any move to try and get in first, they just weren't bothered. Hitori kept saying that she should because she was a woman and albeit his sensei, so he should listen to her, which he retorted with saying that he didn't give a shit about her being his sensei, and that he'd do as he damn well pleased. All of a sudden Hitori disappeared from next to Deidara on the couch, and reappeared in front of him, stuck her tongue out and held up both her middle fingers at him and ran full pelt towards the bathroom and shut the door, the sound of her laughter trailing along behind her.  
  
"If I was bothered to get up I'd bash that door down and drag you out of there!" Deidara yelled after her before laughing softly and sighing in exhaustion. He was rather proud of how much progress he'd made in just a few hours and realised that Hitori was a really good teacher. She didn't say that she had ever taught anyone before, but he doubted it. Then he suddenly remembered their conversation on the rooftop earlier in the day.  
  
I can't believe she's a virgin. It's just so odd since she's so damn attractive.  _Hell, I'd come onto her if I was a guy who took notice of her in a bar or on the street. Wait...what? I shouldn't be thinking these thoughts about her. Even if I did get a really good view of her ass today when she – WHAT? God damn....I really am a pervert._  He laughed inwardly and shook his head as he realised that she was right, before getting up and heading to...their? room and getting the clothes that he slept in last night. He still hadn't washed the other set since Hitori wore them, and he made a mental note to check the mental note he made about asking her how she washed her clothes.  _Unless....she just walks around naked all day and only puts on clothes when she's going out. FUCK, stop thinking about this....now._  He scowled in dissatisfaction at not being able to stop thinking about her in such a perverted manner. He remembered that she was currently showering, which brought some interesting mental images to mind. He shook his head vigorously to try and dispel those thoughts and get rid of the mental images, which didn't work too well.  
  
It got even worse when she walked into the bedroom, wrapped up in nothing but a black fluffy towel and dropped her dirty clothes on the ground started rummaging through her draws. He thought his thoughts were perverted before...well he was quite wrong. He nearly moaned in appreciation as he saw a pair of skimpy looking black panties sitting on top of the pile. She felt the weight of his gaze and looked over her shoulder at him.  
  
She raised an eyebrow. "What? I didn't get any clothes to change into because I was trying to get into the bathroom before you, yeah."  
  
He just stood there, not saying a word and looked away before picking up his clothes off the bed and headed towards the bathroom. Hitori just stood there, utterly confused by his display and just went back to finding some clothes to wear. When she was dressed, she took Deidara clothes out of his pack and grabbed her dirty clothes off the floor before going into the kitchen and opening up the door to the biggest cupboard which was underneath the counter top and held a small washing machine in it. She threw both their clothes in and walked over to the bathroom door and knocked.  
  
"Deidara, can I come in and get the clothes you wore today? I'm about to do a washing load." she said through the door, speaking loud enough so that he would hear her over the sound of the water.  
  
"Um, yeah. But I locked the door" Deidara said loud enough for her to hear through the door. Hitori only replied by opening the door. As if a bathroom door lock would stop her. She walked in and picked up the clothes he had on today off the floor.  
  
"Do you want me to wash your other clothes too and you can just borrow a pair of my boxers or something?" she said while holding the items of clothing in question.  
  
"Are you sure they'll fit me though? I'm not walking around in a pair of pink boxers that leave nothing to the imagination, yeah." he replied with a small laugh at the mental image.  
  
Hitori also laughed at the mental image, but then shook her head as it became slightly more 'detailed' in certain parts. "Nah, they'll fit you. I purposely buy men's clothes to sleep in. They're more comfortable. I'll bring them in in a sec."  
  
She walked out, leaving the bathroom door open and throwing in his clothes in the washer before putting the powder in, and turning it on. She went to the draws again and picked out a nice pair of plain black boxers for him to wear and walked back into the bathroom before setting them down on the small counter.  
  
"They're just sitting on the counter, okay. And I made sure to get you a nice pretty floral pair to bring out your feminine side, yeah." she said with a laugh, which quickly died down when she noticed that she could see a vague silhouette of him in the shower curtain. She couldn't really see anything... _significant_  since he was facing directly towards the wall, but her mind began to fill in what was missing. She shook her head and walked out, shutting the door behind her to let him finish showering in peace.  
  
When he came out a few minutes later, he found Hitori in the kitchen making tea for both of them. When she was finished he carried both mugs into the living room, where he found a shogi board set up on the small table and two cushions on the floor on either side of the table. He set the mugs down and sat down on one of the cushions. She walked in after him and sat down on the other side. He looked at her questioningly and she only replied by making the first move. They played for a while longer and Hitori was surprised and impressed that Deidara could actually plan things out when he wanted them to, and that most of the risks he took worked to his advantage. She did beat him though he challenged her and definitely didn't make it easy. She was lucky that she had that to concentrate on previously, but unlucky now that they had finished playing because she noticed that he wasn't wearing a shirt.  _Duh, of course he's not. I didn't lend him one to wear._  
  
"Random question, are you cold at all? Because I totally forgot to get you a shirt as well." Hitori said, trying to cover up the fact that she was rather impressed by the physical appearance of the man before her. He didn't have as much muscle mass as someone who used a lot of taijutsu, but that was to be expected since he was a predominantly a long-range fighter. Nevertheless, he was in  _very_  good shape.  
  
"Nah, I'm fine actually, thanks" Deidara said before finishing his tea, then sitting back and leaning on his hands. He didn't seem to notice Hitori's appraisal as she subtly watched his muscle ripple when he shifted his weight to get more comfortable. She tore her eyes away, and finished her tea, before taking his mug and getting up and heading to the kitchen, and began to make dinner for them both. When she was done she brought it in and sat it on the table, moving the shogi board over a little to make room, before flicking the light on since it was getting dark and sitting back down. They played another game as they ate, which Hitori won and she proceeded to tease him about it for a few minutes before he finally said something back.  
  
"Virgin." he stated simply, with crossed arms, and looking off to the side. With that one word, she stopped instantly and her expression went deadpan before she started flinging shogi pieces and various creative insults at him. He just put his arms up to protect his face and laughed while being hit with every single shogi piece there was. When she finally ran out she looked out the window and noticed it was dark now and the moon was rather high in the sky. Deidara was still chuckling every now and then and she stood up and threw the cushion she was sitting on at him which he put his arms up to block, before she ran away laughing into the bedroom and jumping on the bed.  
  
Deidara got up and grabbed the cushion he was sitting on, and silently stalked into the bedroom before trying to hit Hitori with it. Before he could realise, she had grabbed a pillow off the bed and blocked the hit with it before sitting up and kicking his cushion out of his hands. She smirked and stood up and started trying to hit him with her pillow, while he desperately tried to get to the other side of the bed and get the other pillow so he could defend himself, and attack her. She finally let him get it, and a large pillow fight that lasted for approximately five minutes straight ensued. They ran all around the house, jumping over the table in the living room and the kitchen counter, hiding behind the shower curtain (and Hitori nearly slipped over on the wet tiles) and basically just making a mess. They ended up back in the bedroom somehow, and they both collapsed onto the bed still out of breath from running around and laughing at their antics. It was undoubtedly the most fun both of them had had since they were separated.  
  
When they finally calmed down, they both made the unspoken decision to go to bed and get some rest, since they'd be training again tomorrow. Hitori fell asleep surprisingly quick, and Deidara smiled sleepily at her sleeping face before drifting off himself.  
  
\-----  
  
The cloaked figure walked into the room silently and made eye contact with the other person, who sat in a chair over the other side of the room. The only source of light was a small lamp sitting on a table next to the chair occupied by the other person. The first person walked over and was slowly made visible and her face with grey-ish blue eyes with hints of amber, a lip piercing, and soft blue hair and a paper rose was illuminated by the dim light.  
  
"Deidara has been killed. Unfortunately, we do not know who killed him and there was no body." the woman said quitely with a calm tone.  
  
"That is unfortunate. He completed every mission he was given with a professional attitude. He will be difficult to replace." the other person said with an emotionless voice. He leaned forward to reveal his face which was covered in odd piercings and he had almost hypnotic ringed eyes and orange spiky hair.  
  
"Indeed. Shall we tell the other members now?" the woman asked, with the same calm tone.  
  
"Yes. Let's summon them immediately." the male said after thinking for a moment.  
  
A while later, there were six coloured silhouette standing on six fingers on two hands of a statue in a large, dark cavern.  
  
"Where's the blondie? Did he blow himself up or something?" the tallest figure said laughingly.  
  
There was a moment of silence before someone spoke. "We do not know the specifics, but Deidara has been killed."  
  
The tallest figure chuckled under his breath. "I knew he'd get himself killed next."  
  
"There is also no sign of a body either." the man with the ringed eyes stated, which earned a disappointed groan from a large plant like looking figure.  
  
"What if he isn't really dead though, since there is no body?" asked the same figure that groaned just a few moments before.  
  
"Unless he really did blow himself up" said the same figure, but with a distinctively different voice.  
  
The tallest figure spoke again. "That certainly wouldn't surprise me".  
  
"It is a great loss to Akatsuki. He will be difficult to replace. I will mourn this loss of a comrade. Dismissed" the ring-eyed man said with finality.  
  
All six figures flickered out, and the cavern was left in darkness once more.


	7. Chapter 7 - Frustration, Death and Inception?

**Chapter 7 - Frustration, Death And Inception?**  
  
Hitori woke up instantly, and sat up dead straight when she heard cursing and what sounded like a smash of glass coming from somewhere in the house. She sat still, 'feeling' for any presence aside Deidara's, and when she figured that no one else was there, she got up and walked out of the bedroom, still on her guard (Not that she ever dropped her guard, but still) and stopped when she saw Deidara looking completely guilty, and she looked down at the smashed plate on the ground and food scattered everywhere and the two bowls that he was holding in each hand which looked like they had something in them.  
  
She just stood there, staring at the site before her and simply raised an eyebrow in question. Deidara chuckled nervously, and put the two bowls back on the counter, and began to clean up the mess he made. Hitori grabbed a broom from the bathroom, and walked back out to help. When they got everything cleaned up, she leaned with her back against the counter and gave him a look that clearly said 'Uh... What. The. Fuck?'.  
  
He chuckled nervously again. "Um, I was trying to make some breakfast to bring into the bedroom for us, but I accidentally knocked the plate off the counter somehow..." he sheepishly scratched the back of his head and inwardly hoped that she wouldn't take him outside and beat the shit out of him for it.  
  
"You're a shinobi, an S-class one at that, yeah. How the  _hell_  are you not dexterous enough to stop that kind of thing from happening?" Hitori just rested her head on her hand silently. Then she started laughing. "I don't think you realised how  _hilarious_  you looked when I first saw you. You looked like a puppy who was caught doing something it knows it shouldn't be doing!" Deidara just stood there frowning at her metaphor, but his mouth was twisted in a slightly embarrassed smile.  
  
When she calmed down she took the two bowls of soup and brought them into the bedroom, setting them both down on her bedside table as Deidara brought in the two glasses of juice he poured earlier and swapped Hitori a bowl for a glass. They both ate in silence, all the while Deidara had a slightly furrowed brow and Hitori just slurped down her soup happily until she noticed his expression.  
  
She swallowed the mouthful of soup she had and spoke. "What's up with you, huh?"  
  
"Well, I was trying to do something...nice...since you have been letting me stay with you and all. But clearly it failed miserably, yeah." he kind of hesitated saying 'nice' since it really wasn't in his nature to do 'nice' things, being an ex-Akatsuki member, terrorist bomber and all that jazz.  
  
She shrugged indifferently. "Doesn't worry me, yeah. It is a little more interesting having someone around who  _isn't_  a hunter nin trying to take my head. The last time that happened was when I made friends with a cat who had a thorn in it's foot. I pulled it out and healed it up. Clique, I know, but it happened, yeah."  
  
Deidara nearly spat out his last mouthful of soup from laughing but luckily he held it in. He knew Hitori would probably make him was the sheets and blankets  _by hand_  if he did that. After punching him a few times, of course. Just the mental image of the woman sitting beside him, dressed up in her usual ninja attire, Hakujou strapped to her back, petting a small cat and pulling a thorn from it's paw. He couldn't take it seriously.  
  
"Why is that funny? I like animals, so...shut up!" Hitori faced away from him and finished her soup quicker than she thought possible while Deidara just rolled around on the bed laughing. She gathered her clothes, and a few weapons and flung a shuriken at Deidara, which he barely dodged with a yelp, and lodged into the wall behind him.  
  
"Get dressed. We're training. And I guarantee that I'm going to get you back laughing for at my expense." she glared at him and threw another shuriken at him when she decided he wasn't moving quick enough. She tried not to laugh as he yelped again and narrowly dodged the shuriken and walked into the bathroom and shut the door behind her.  
  
When she came out, dressed and armed for the training session, she found Deidara outside, already warming up.  _Damn right_ , she thought triumphantly before she walked out the door to meet him in the clearing. They briefly talked about what they should do, and decided on warming up with a little taijutsu before moving onto using weapons and the wooden katana before doing strictly ninjutsu. The taijutsu section went quickly, and Hitori wasn't able to gain the upper hand as quick as the first time, and she felt rather proud of how quick he was learning.  
  
They moved onto using weapons and Deidara got a small cut on his upper arm from just getting out of the way of a Fūma shuriken that Hitori had pulled out of nowhere. She healed it up straight after she'd done it (her excuse was that they shouldn't leave any physical evidence of them being there if they have to leave in a hurry, but she couldn't lie to herself that she didn't want a close up look) and told him that he was lucky since she might have taken his arm off if he reacted any later. He just looked at her with a mischievous expression and told her that he'd just have to find a zombie that could patch him up, and he earned a firm but playful punch to the gut for that comment.  
  
They spent a little longer on using katana than they did on the weapons or taijustu, mainly because of Deidara's lack of experience with them. Afterwards, he was able to move a lot quicker, and use more power behind his attacks and defend himself much better than he could before they started. He ran inside and got two cold bottles of water for them both and they had a rest before moving onto what would undoubtedly be the most interesting part of the day.  _Ninjutsu only_. Neither of them had any idea how much the other had progressed in this area, beside them both having a vague knowledge of a couple of techniques that they could both use.  
  
Facing off on each end of the clearing, they both looked straight in each other's eyes for any sign of what the other would do. Faster than Deidara could register, Hitori started doing hand seals.  
  
"Katon: Gokakyu no jutsu!" she yelled while bringing her hand up to her face and exhaling and watching Deidara move out of the way of the flames. Deidara instantly had both his hands in his clay pouches and had already started modelling the clay. A few seconds later, out popped a few small clay birds, and they went straight towards Hitori. She went to get a few shuriken from her leg holster out of instinct, but remembered that she couldn't use them. She jumped out of the way, but they didn't explode.  _Okay, so now I know for sure that they only detonate on his command_. They followed her, and she realised that he was originally from Iwagakure, so there was a good chance that he used Doton jutsu.  
  
She jumped up high and used her Chidori Kunai jutsu and noticed that the birds stopped dead in their tracks. Smiling triumphantly, she realised that she'd also just found a loophole. She could use her Chidori Kunai jutsu and she would still technically be using ninjutsu. She laughed loudly internally and turned her attention to Deidara who seemed to be rather disgruntled but he was most likely preparing more bombs. She flickered directly in front of him, laughed in his face and then flickered, appearing a few yards away.  
  
Deidara was clearly scowling now, with her obvious advantage in speed, and she had already figured out that his jutsu was earth-based. As well as her being able to use ninjutsu based kunai.  _So. Not. Fair_ , he grumbled inwardly and then Hitori grabbed his attention by stopping and snapping her head in one direction and eyeing the area suspiciously. Her hand twitched over her leg holster, and she turned to him with a look that said 'Something is coming.' and ran off inside to get more weapons and her katana. Deidara followed suit, and grabbed his other clay pouch and decided to grab one of the katana strapped to Hitori's wall.  
  
She eyed him questioningly, but figured that even though he wasn't good enough to use it in a proper battle yet, it was pretty hard to be over-armed as a shinobi. They walked out, and she realised, that having him there could be bad if whoever was coming over there way recognised him and somehow let their village know he was alive. But on the other hand, they were probably drawn to the place by the chakra output they had going during the sparring session and she couldn't possibly try and convince them that there was no one else around.  
  
They walked out until they were about a hundred yards away from the house and Hitori said to Deidara that they would be here inside of 5 minutes.  
  
"They? There's more than one? Can you tell how many there are? I was never the best sensor type and you would be more sensitive to chakra, being a medic nin and all." he watched as her gaze turned inward at his question and then she mumbled something for a few moments then turned to him.  
  
"There's four of them, maybe an ANBU cell or something. They are all pretty decent but nothing we can't handle." Deidara nodded once in reply. "They masked their chakra a few minutes after I sensed them, so they probably have a sensor on their team. I can't tell now whether they would have medical capabilities, but I'm going to try and take them out first just in case they do." he nodded again and agreed with her logic.  
  
"Alright, so do you want me to take the other three then? I'm afraid that one might be a little too much for you" he said deviously, and tensed slightly when her hand moved, almost waiting for the inevitable and proverbial 'smack-upside-the-head'.  
  
"Usually I'd say something insulting back to you, but I'm sure that they'll be here any second, so prepare yourself" Hitori said quietly while turning her head to look in each direction for any sign of the shinobi and whether they would attack or not.  
  
Luckily, her question was answered for her, when there was a sudden change in the air that signalled a genjutsu had been cast. She didn't know about Deidara's resistance to genjutsu, but she didn't want to take the chance that he might not be able to dispel it. She abruptly stopped her chakra flow, then blasted it out as much as she could and when the genjutsu dropped she turned to Deidara who looked like he wasn't even stuck in it. His right eye was shut, which was odd, but his chakras didn't feel like someone who was in a genjutsu. She raised an eyebrow, and made a mental note of it.  
  
She waited for the hunters to make their next move, and when three shuriken came flying out of the trees from her left, she leapt gracefully out of the way, and flicked her head in the direction from where they came. She took out three poisoned senbon and readied them to be thrown and hopefully; make a hit even a small one. The poison she used would kill even if they gave the target what looks like a paper cut. A hunter nin must have drawn his katana because both her and Deidara her the slight sound of it being pulled out of the scabbard, which would have been a beautiful sound if they weren't about to be attacked with said katana. She gave Deidara a brief nod, who understood her meaning perfectly. She knew that he still wasn't good enough to use it against opponents who had most likely been using them for ages, so she basically looked at him as if to say 'Don't even think about it'. He swiftly put his hands in his clay pouches and started away, while Hitori took a fighting stance.  
  
They stood back to back, waiting for the next move. It was always like this. Just more waiting. It was almost like a seige. She decided that was enough. Deidara's ear pricked when she spoke.  
  
"Oi...in three seconds...jump...high" she said so quietly that he could only just hear her, making sure that the hunter nins wouldn't hear it. Then in those next three seconds, she closed her eyes, took in a deep breath, then on the mark of the third second, she felt Deidara jump and instantly dropped to one knee and smashed her fist into the ground, using as much chakra in the impact as possible. The force shook the trees that the hunter nins were in, and she listened carefully for any sounds so she could determine where they were.  
  
 _There_ , she heard the of a muffled sound of shock. She sprinted over and swung her leg into the tree that he was in, again using as much chakra into the hit as she could, and smirked as she saw the part of the tree that she kicked almost disintergrate with the extreme force of the blow. Then she just barely heard feet hit the ground a few yards in front of her and knew that if she didn't take the nin by surprise, they probably wouldn't have made any noise at all.  
  
Whatever camoflague jutsu he was using dropped and she could see that she was right. They were ANBU. From Iwagakure.  _Should've known_ , she scoffed inwardly, then she felt herself slip willingly into 'work mode'. She heard Deidara set off an explosive and knew that things were getting started for him as well. The Iwa shinobi in front of her, rushed towards her, and another came at her from the right. They both had their katana drawn and before they could blink, Hitori had drawn Hakujou and had blocked both of their downward swings. With a blank face, she fought with them both. The next adrenalin filled minutes was full of parries, blocks, dodges, thrusts and swings.  
  
Finally, there was an opening on one of the nin. She swung her blade down, and cut him diagonally from his right shoulder to his left hip. It wasn't immediately fatal, but he would bleed out in a few minutes.  _One down_ , she thought as she jumped up with ease onto a low branch and sheathed Hakujou and made hand seals that only a Sharingan could follow.  
  
"Katon: Endan no jutsu!" she yelled tonelessly and aimed the scorching flames towards the uninjured Iwa nin, who just barely dodged, and half of the clothes on his left arm had been burnt off, and his skin was red raw. She heard him hiss slightly at the stinging pain and he dropped his katana. There was no way he would be able to wield it with both hands after getting a burnt arm. With noticeable pain, he started making hand seals.  
  
"Doton: Doryūdan!" the Iwa nin yelled and a large ball of mud came flying at her. She used Shunshin to dodge it easily and appeared beside the Iwa shinobi and started throwing various kicks and punches at him. In the background, she could hear Deidara yelling 'Katsu' and then explosions every few minutes, and the sound of his almost maniacal laughter at the fun he was having fighting his ex-fellow ninja. The nin Hitori was up against was fairly smart, and he didn't block any of her taijutsu, just dodged. He finally had an opening and Hitori straightened out her hand so it was completely flat and thrusted it towards his chest, and he didn't have time to move out of the way, so he ended up with a hole the size of a fist through his chest. He fell backwards and hit the ground. He was dead.  
  
Deidara was just finishing of the last nin when he saw Hitori appear beside him and then reappear in front of the shinobi he was about to aim his next explosive at. The nin fell over, and then all was silent. He stalked over to where Hitori was, standing next to the body, and as he got closer, he saw the hole through the nin's chest. His eyes went wide, and he looked at Hitori with shock and awe. He was impressed with her ruthlessness and lack of mercy. She used to be such an innocent kid, but now, he understood her 'work mode'. She would have made a good Akatsuki member. He watched as she took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a few moments, and when she opened them again, they held a small glint of triumph in them.  
  
"That was......uh....." he said as he scratched the back of his head sheepishly.  
  
"It's my....favourite way to kill someone" Hitori said quietly as she held up her right hand, which was covered in blood, with disgust. "Where's the other nin? Don't tell me he ran off" she added, her tone laced with irritation. She looked at him questioningly when Deidara didn't reply and he just raised an eyebrow and gave a small malicious smirk, and she instantly knew what he did to the nin, who was undeniably now scattered ashes all over the ground. She returned his smirk.  _We're just as sadistic as each other_ , she thought as she told him to 'dispose' of the bodies the same way he did with the other nin.  
  
She began slowly strolling back with subconscious caution, and keeping her senses running high in case there was more nin on the way. She heard one large explosion, which would have been made up of three smaller ones, and then a few moments later Deidara caught up to her and they casually strolled back to the house. When they got back, Hitori went to fix something for them to eat, only to find that there wasn't much there.  
  
"Dei, get up you bum. We're running out of food. Get ready and we'll go in town. We can get take-away for dinner while we're there." Hitori yelled towards the bedroom, where she knew Deidara was probably already spread out like a starfish on the bed.  
  
"Ah, fuck off. I can't be bothered. Just bring me back something, I'm pretty hungry." he yelled back. He most certainly was spread out like a starfish on the bed, and he definitely did  _not_  feel like moving any time soon.  
  
Hitori groaned. "I'm not getting you anything unless you come with me!...fucking ungrateful free-loading bastard" she added in a grumble while writing a list of what they needed to buy.  
  
They argued for a few minutes more, but Hitori eventually got her way (as always) and Deidara finally got up. He quickly changed into a clean shirt, since the other one had a few blood splatters on the front of it, and when he came out he noticed that Hitori had blood on her shirt too. He mentioned it to her, saying that she should probably change it if they were going to try and keep a low profile. Grudgingly, she agreed and began to plod off, silently, of course, to the bedroom.  
  
Deidara leant against the kitchen counter and incidently, from where he was standing, he got front row seats to Hitori changing. His breath caught in his throat as he watched her shirt lift higher and higher and finally come off completely and drop on the floor. She turned to the side slightly to pick up the clean shirt from the dresser and he absently licked his lips as he appraised her toned figure.  
  
She wasn't incredibly curvy, but it was all woman. All kunoichi. He was never a fan of the ever-lasting beauty kind of art, like Sasori was, but Hitori was almost a compromise between both sides. Her life, for a shinobi, would probably be of an impressive length, no doubt because of her skill. So she would last. But there's those beautiful, transient moments where she seems truly happy that give his side more. He thought that she was beautiful.  
  
Suddenly, there was a slight pang in his chest that he couldn't identify or understand, and he inwardly groaned in disappointment when she pulled her clean top on. Luckily, Hitori hadn't bothered taking off her knee-high buckle up boots, so she grabbed the empty pack off the dresser and then she was ready to go. She turned around and the first thing she was Deidara staring right at her, with an unfamiliar intensity in his eyes. She didn't bother dwelling on it, and started towards the door. Deidara followed after her and shut the door behind her, and locked it.  
  
They started off towards the closest town and Deidara couldn't get the image of a half-dressed Hitori out of his mind. The way her pale skin gleamed in the natural light and how her hair fell across her back and shoulders. He wanted nothing more at that moment than to stalk up behind her, wrap his arms around her and start laying kisses across her shoulders and up and down her neck. This train of thought was not good, as he felt a little more...'stiff' in a certain place than he did a few minutes ago. He knew that Hitori was attractive, but that pang he felt in his chest didn't make sense. He'd never had that kind of thing before.  
  
He realised that he must have been thinking for a while because now a village was coming into sight. They got a whole bunch of groceries which had completely filled the pack and they were just deciding on what to have for dinner when Hitori felt a tingle of chakra. It was close. She snapped her head towards Deidara and looked at him the same way she had earlier today when she sensed the first sign of those hunter nins. They both already had their chakra masked so they just needed to try and blend in with the crowd if they were going to get out of this without fighting anyone.  
  
Neither of them dared to look in the direction of where the tingle came from and they both inwardly hoped that whoever they were, that they weren't with that Iwa ANBU cell that they 'took care of' this morning. There was four tingles of chakra in a large circle around them and they knew that they'd been discovered. And that they were surrounded.  
  
 _Shit, we clearly can't get out the village before we take these guys out. And we won't be able to go all out either because we have to make sure that we don't use our jutsu. We're fucked_ , Hitori thought and they both knew that this simple trip to get groceries couldn't have turned out any worse. They were supposed to be laying low so that the Akatsuki would have the most minimal chance of finding out that Deidara wasn't exactly dead. Quite the opposite, in fact. They tried to sneak through the crowd, hoping that the nin would follow them, so they wouldn't have to fight in the town, which meant that they would be able to fight using their own jutsu.  
  
"This is fucking ridiculous. How do they manage to keep finding us?" Deidara hissed as they power-walked through the crowded market place. Hitori didn't reply, and instead just continued walking briskly and kept a close eye on the chakras surrounding them. Clearly they hadn't masked their chakras completely for a reason. They wanted her and Deidara to know that they were there and they had been cornered. Hitori realised at that moment that they weren't moving. She pushed Deidara up against the wall next to them and stood very close to him. For a moment, he may have felt slightly hopeful, which  _did not_  settle with him well. When Hitori spoke, he heard her serious tone, and he knew it was bad.  
  
"Dei, they aren't moving. We're stuck." she thought for a moment, "Let's try and take out one or two of them and hopefully that will open up a path for us to get through. And do not, I repeat,  _do not_  use your clay. It will make you clearly identifiable and I won't be using my jutsu either. We cannot let anyone recognise us. Got it?"  
  
"Got it" he managed to say without stuttering or choking up from the after effects of having Hitori whisper in his ear. That kind of thing wasn't good for any man. Especially when the woman that was involved was incredibly attractive, and for a moment he could almost feel her chest brushing against his slightly.  
  
 _Dammit, this isn't what I should be thinking about right now. Stop it!_  He scolded himself inwardly and resisted the urge to grumble when Hitori pulled away. She started walking again, but slower, waiting for the first move. She could understand why they would purposely trap them here, but it was such a fucking pain. It just had to be today, didn't it. They'd already put up pain in the ass hunter nins today.  
  
They stopped walking after a few minutes, close enough to the location of one of the nins so that they couldn't attack them with anything less than a long range technique, or a ranged weapon, but far enough as to not alarm them. A kunai landed between Deidara and Hitori's feet and they glanced at each other, with irritation in their eyes. Neither side moved, or made any attempt to and after a few minutes, Hitori snapped.  
  
"That's it you fucking meddling bastards" she muttered angrily under her breath and stomped towards the first nin's location. The tingle of chakra moved back a little and she kept on going towards him. The other three moved slightly closer, but they couldn't move any further if they didn't want to break their circle and leave one side unguarded. Hitori flicked in front of the first nin, who was standing behind a large stall, which would conceal them from the rest of the market, and before he could react at all, she grabbed the collar of his shirt, looked directly into the eyeholes of his ANBU mask and her eyes promised cold, bloody murder.  
  
"Here's a fucking tip asshole. Unless you and your buddies want to die even more painfully than I would kill anyone else who got in my way, you'll move, and let us through, so we can take this somewhere else, yeah." she growled at him low and dangerously. He said nothing, and made no move to get out of her way. She let go of him, and thrust her chakra-filled straight hand at his chest, and there was a sickening crunch when it made impact. He wouldn't be alive for much longer.  
  
Deidara caught up to her, and went to start scolding her for running off but stopped when he saw how angry she was. He knew that this would piss her off, but she was absolutely livid. aThen, her expression turned completely blank. She was the most dangerous like this. He also noticed the corpse of an ANBU member laying on the ground a few yards away while a trademark hole through his chest. Hitori took hold of Deidara's arm and began leading him towards the forest, still trying to make sure that they didn't grab the attention of any potential onlookers in the markets.  
  
The three remaining shinobi began to move accordingly to continue to keep them both surrounded since they had probably sensed that one of their own had been taken out. Then, they started to close in on them. With every step the circle got smaller and Hitori's hand twitched over her leg holster. She slowly drew three senbon (the most inconspicuous weapons she had) and readied herself for what promised to be a quick, and most definitely frustrating fight, where they would be forced to conceal their movements as much as possible, and try to make sure that no one aside the ANBU cell realised who they were. They slowly stalked forwards as the nin on the right began to move in front of them at the same speed as they moved forwards. By then, they had moved out of the markets for the most part and hopefully the people around would be smart enough to run when things got started. It would not be pretty.  
  
The two shinobi behind them were beginning to catch up and the nin in front of them had stopped moving completely. Hitori still held her three senbon in her right hand and was careful to make sure that she didn't scratch herself with them, even the slightest since the poison on the was the most deadly in her arsenal and even for a medic nin such as herself, it would be a bitch to fix. She did have the antidote on her, but there was only enough to still the effects for a while so that she would be able to get home and get the proper dosage. Deidara had a kunai at the ready, and she was confident that he would be fine using it, even though when they were up against multiple enemies this morning he had used his usual techniques as well as incorporating a little close range combat, which would have given him even a little more experience.  
  
Deidara kept a close eye on the shinobi in front of them, and simultaneously concentrated on checking for the other nin's chakra behind them. Hitori was much faster, so he assumed that she would take the other two. Both sides were at a stalemate. It was almost like in a Western movie where the tumbleweed goes past when the two rivals are facing off in the main street of the town. Hitori had already had enough of this ridiculousness so she stomped her foot in anger (being careful to not channel any chakra to it so that she wouldn't end up creating a small earth tremor, which would unquestionably get the attention of the whole entire village).  
  
She turned towards Deidara slightly so that he would hear her whispers. "Dei, I've got an idea. Use your Doton: Doryudan, and I'll use my Katon: Endan so we can create a collaboration jutsu to send at them to distract them all and I'll use that chance to try and get them with my poisoned senbon. Just please...don't get in the way. I have an antidote, but not enough to completely neutralise the poison." she quickly glanced around them at the surrounding shinobi, "I've memorised where they are, and I'll be able to sense if they move so that I can still aim properly. We still have to really keep ourselves from being identifiable, so when I give the signal, start making hand seals as fast as you can." they backed up so that they're were completely back-to-back and they both started making hand seals. Hitori made them a little slower than usual since she was used to going up against the Sharingan, and she needed to keep in time with Deidara as much as possible since they had no practice with something like this.  
  
Back in the day, they had always worked together to survive, but they had never known how to fight properly, especially against shinobi, which ended up being their downfall. She finished doing her hand seals and her and Deidara got into a position that would allow the jutsu to have the best combined effect. They both yelled out the name of their jutsu and they aimed it at the enemy shinobi who dodged out of the way, and Hitori used her sensory abilities to locate there exact position and threw her first senbon at the nin closest to her, and threw the other two and the other nin who had moved to dodge the jutsu which also made them break the circle.  
  
Hitori knew that the jutsu would have definitely got the attention of the people in the crowded market place, so she hissed to Deidara to run as fast as he could towards the forest and they took off at top speed. Deidara had gotten a little faster in their training, but if Hitori really put her mind to it, he wouldn't be able to keep up with her for more than a few seconds. She stayed behind him a few steps so that she could immediately react when the nins caught up. She wasn't sure if the senbon had hit their targets since the jutsu they used didn't just lower the visibility of their opponents. It lowered their own as well. She knew that she aimed the senbon at the spot where she sensed the chakra's but that didn't always mean it hit.  
  
She felt two chakra's coming after them and they were much faster than she thought. It only took them all of a few seconds to recover, so she hoped that she got lucky and managed to hit a fatal spot on the third nin. Deidara also sensed them coming and started making hand seals again for another doton jutsu. He hadn't used any ninjutsu techniques other than his art recently so he hoped he still had it in him to use them as good as he used to be able to. He stopped running and looked over at Hitori who knew that he was about to do something from the look in his eyes so she got clear out of the way and watched as he finished making the hand seals.  
  
"Doton: Ganchūsō!" he yelled as he aimed the large pillars made of rock at the persuing nins, who dodged them and Deidara continued to use the jutsu in hope that he might get them in their blind spot, which he did. One of the nin didn't get entirely out of the way quick enough, and got smashed in the leg by one of the pillars and groaned loudly in pain. Deidara smirked at the sound of the impact and he hoped that it hit hard enough so that he would at least be incapacitated. Unfortunately, he wasn't so lucky. The nin could still move fast enough to dodge some of the other pillars, but his speed had fallen quite a lot.  
  
Hitori seemed to notice this too, and she ran towards him after Deidara had stopped using the jutsu and launched a barrage of taijutsu at him. He was very good at close-range fighting. Good enough to at least keep up enough with Hitori when he had an injured leg. He finally lost his footing after stepping on a rock with his bad leg and lost his balance for a moment. That moment was long enough for Hitori to aim a kick at his side and the impact made a sound which would make most normal people shudder. He was down.  
  
Deidara was actually having a wail of a time fighting the other nin. He was undoubtedly the strongest in the group, most likely the buntaicho of the cell. He was good with evasion, which annoyed Deidara, but it did make it more interesting. Back and forth, both Hitori and Deidara fought for the next few minutes. Lucky that they were both S-class shinobi, or they would be in real trouble fighting these guys. Deidara finally took out one of the nin, but he didn't realise until after that in the heat of battle that he used his jutsu and blew up the nin.  _Shit, Hitori will have my head on a platter for this!_  he cringed inwardly and he physically tensed up like he had just gotten rigor mortis when he heard Hitori's low and dangerous growl in the back of her throat.  
  
His back was facing towards her, but he heard her coming (no doubt she let him hear) and he cautiously whirled around to face her, and before he knew it, she had slammed him into a wall of the market place, which was about 10 metres away. Hitori was holding him up off the ground by his throat, and he could barely get enough oxygen so he would have the strength to pry her off. Not that it would be easy to do so, since she had the advantage with her chakra enhanced strength. She looked completely emotionless, but it was incredibly murderous nonetheless, unlike anything he had seen before. He attempted to convince himself it was the lack of oxygen to his brain...but he felt scared. Killing intent was coming off her in waves and it felt like he was drowning, suffocating and burning alive all at the same time. Her viciously blank gaze was set on him, and he struggled to meet her eyes. And he wished he hadn't.  
  
She honestly looked like she was fully prepared to kill him, and then she suddenly seemed to come to her senses, but she didn't release him fully, only enough for him to keep breathing slightly. Her other hand clenched in a fist, and her nails began to draw blood from her palm. She had already lost her temper too far to reign it in fully, but the toneless voice in her head was saying that he disobeyed orders, and that he did not deserve to be on this mission. The other, more colourful voice in her head, which was a little more quiet and distant sounding said that she shouldn't be hurting Deidara. He was her child hood friend and that she couldn't lose him after just getting him back.  
  
Her gaze turned inward as she contemplated what she was doing right now. She had forgotten all about fighting the nins for a moment and couldn't register what happened when she suddenly came to her senses and realised that she currently had her hand wrapped around Deidara's throat, and that she was actually using so much of her strength that he was dangling about half a foot of the ground and that he wasn't even able to struggle because of lack of oxygen to his extremities. Slowly, she released him, and her expression became more aware, and shocked. Nothing like this had ever happened before. She had never attacked a squad member before. But that may be because they all knew that if they ever disobeyed her orders, that shit would hit the fan. And more.  
  
Deidara knew that Hitori wasn't herself when she attacked him, but she seemed to come to her senses quick enough for him to drop down to the ground and fall to his knees instantly and catch his breath for the next few minutes. When he had recovered, he noticed that Hitori was still standing where she had been after she dropped him. In fact, she hadn't moved at all. She was still standing staring into space with her hands at her sides, almost dejectedly, and that she had an expression on her face which suggested that she was a little confused about what happened.  
  
He gradually got up onto his feet and straightened out his clothes a little, and looked at Hitori and almost felt bad. This  _really_  could not have turned out worse for them. Hitori eventually snapped out of it and lifted her head up and stared straight into his eyes. She blinked a few times, still looked slightly dejected and confused.  
  
Suddenly, he was distracted as she spontaneously flung her arms around him and drew him as close to her as she could. Deidara was even more confused about her doing this than probably anything he'd experienced in his life. She was holding him so tightly that it was a little difficult to breathe. He just stood there for a moment, utterly shocked at this sudden display of unconcealed emotion from her.  
  
He barely choked out her name before wrapping his arms around her and started stroking her hair gently, hoping it would calm her. It seemed to help because she relaxed in his arms, and inhaled then exhaled shakily and it was almost like she was having her own version of a small breakdown. She stood on her tip-toes and buried her head in the junction of his neck and shoulder. She inhaled and exhaled shakily again and he tightened his grip on her and closed his eyes and tried not to think any sexual thoughts. That worked for a few moments, until Hitori began to nuzzle him gently and he could feel her lips brushing against his neck and she grabbed onto his hair enough to be painful, but it was  _exactly_  what Deidara liked. He knew that she most likely was only doing it for the sole reason of trying to reassure herself that he was still there, and that he was okay. But for him, it was only turning him on.  
  
He turned his head down a little to look at her and he saw that her eyes were shut tightly and she was biting her lip. She felt his gaze and shuddered as she exhaled, and she pulled him closer to her, if such a thing was possible. He pulled back a little and gently cupped her face and lifted her head up so that he could look her in the eye. He began to coo softly to her and tell her that he was fine and she should stop worrying.  
  
"Hey, Kage-chan. It's okay. Stop freaking out, I'm fine. You weren't yourself, it's okay." He reassured her over and over again as he brushed the hair from her face and kept lifting her head back up when she kept trying to look down.  
  
"Dei, I will  _not_  lose you again. You may have just made the possibility that Akatsuki could find you and hunt you down before killing you. I've been on my own long enough. Don't leave me alone again." She whispered to him and she looked away from him defiantly.  
  
He was incredibly taken aback by her honesty. She would usually never admit to anything like this, not even to herself. He rested his forehead against hers and she finally looked in his eyes again. She was almost looking like her old self after he did something reckless. Worry was written all over her face. He ran his thumb over her cheek soothingly and slowly brought his face closer to hers and with slight hesitance, he pressed his lips to hers...


	8. Chapter 8 - Shut Down

**Chapter 8 - Shut Down**  
  
_He ran his thumb over her cheek soothingly and slowly brought his face closer to hers and with slight hesitance, he pressed his lips to hers..._  
  
She just stood there. Stunned. She didn't pull away, but she still had her arms around him, but she was so shocked that they dropped to her side. Her eyes were wide, and she had no idea how to react. Nothing like this had ever happened before. No one had ever been this...intimate....with her before. Kakashi had hugged her a few times, awkwardly, since he wasn't really used to it either, but nothing romantic. Just when she had lost a member of her cell and was having a bad day.  
  
Deidara had absolutely  _no god damn fucking clue_  what he was doing. He just had to do....  _something._  She was just looking up at him with those eyes filled with worry, and biting her lip. She looked so beautiful to him right now. So much like her old self, when things were easier. When they didn't have the risk of being hunted by anyone who bothered to try. As well as the risk of him not being dead being discovered by the Akatsuki. He was just following his instincts, acting on urges. He knew that she wouldn't have any experience with anything like this before, but he just felt compelled to press his lips to hers and show her that he was there, and that it was okay.  
  
Hitori felt some odd feeling welling up inside her. She couldn't identify or describe it, but she knew that it was...different....and almost interesting. She was feeling a little short of breath, and not for obvious reasons. Then, Deidara pulled away. She subconsciously leaned forward with him when he pulled away. He still had his hands cupping her face but he began to lower them a little and went to start pulling away completely when Hitori realised that the feeling that she had was gone. It confused her, but intrigued her. She wanted to experience it again.  
  
She reached up quickly and grabbed the front of his shirt which made him stop pulling away from her. He wasn't sure what that meant, but when she pulled him closer, he knew what she wanted. He put one hand around to the back of her neck and the other around her waist and kissed her again. She sighed a little and relaxed in his arms and her grip on his shirt tightened significantly and she had her eyes tightly shut as she felt that oddly interesting feeling again. They only separated again when they had need for air, and Deidara rested his forehead against hers again and tried to comprehend exactly what the fuck just happened.  
  
They were both completely stunned by the spontaneity and lack of sense the situation made and it could be said that the last part of their trip into town made up for the hunter nin and the possibility of being recognised a little. All Hitori knew was that it was just her luck that Deidara would get found out and killed, and as much as she hated that she actually spoke what she was really feeling and thinking instead of pretending that part of her didn't exist, she knew she was right. She had been alone for too long, and to have Deidara taken away from her again (maybe a little more permanently this time) was just something she didn't want to have to deal with. She inwardly vowed years back that when she got him back and they went back to doing whatever the fuck they wanted, that they would get rid of any possible threat to that. The Akatsuki, however, would be ridiculously hard to deal with compared to some piss weak hunter nins who just wanted the glory of taking out an S-class missing nin.  
  
Deidara lent back and dropped his hands from her face and gently took hold of Hitori's smaller hands that were still fisted in his shirt and just stood there quietly for the next few moments that were full of a mix of comprehension, shock, and maybe a hint of something that could possibly be....pleasant. He still had  _no idea_  what the  _fuck_  he was doing, and the whole situation really hadn't sunk in yet. In a way, he was almost hopeful it wouldn't, just in case Hitori snapped out of her emotional state (which she probably hadn't come out since their separation) and smash his skull for taking advantage of her. Either that, or just tear his head straight off his shoulders. He inwardly shuddered a little at the thought that she could probably do that, and decided to be smart and not give her more ideas. He'd already made that mistake before.   
  
Slowly, other thoughts began to cloud his mind. Firstly, why he was acting like such a fucking ponce? Secondly, Hitori had wanted him to continue, and while it may have shocked him to no end, there was a small part of him, which he couldn't quite squash completely that absolutely  _loved_  it. Thirdly, the idea of him actually enjoying Hitori's desire to continue, but not the usual 'take-this-hot-bitty-back-to-my-hotel-room-and-make-a-'bang'', but something a little more different than that. It just didn't feel like the every day lust. Fourthly, the fact that there was a possibility that he might have 'feelings' beyond anger, frustration, irritation, creativity, lust, satisfaction (the latter two usually went together) and homicidal intent, with the occasional suicidal tendency – sacrifice for his greatest work of art - ...well the notion was  _completely, utterly, and pathetically ridiculous_. He thought that he had long since buried any feeling other than those.   
  
Apparently it was the same for Hitori. She was still a little shaken, if such a thing existed with her, but she knew that this whole...thing...was entirely out of character for her. She didn't bother 'feeling' any more. All she did was chill in a constant state of indifference and the only things she actively took part in was, train and drink herself stupid when she had nothing else to do. She would occasionally sleep, when her body allowed it. Whenever an emotion reared it's obnoxious head, all she did was squish it down to the soles of her feet and walk it off. Literally. It was just how she dealed with things. Always had done. She'd just pack up her bags and wander until she wasn't bothered to keep wandering.  
  
Just this one little seemingly insignificant event (in the life of a shinobi, anyway) was suddenly changing everything. Hitori could already feel the dynamic of their relationship slowly altering as the moments went by, and it scared her to no end. She had already let him into her life as her best friend, only to have him forcibly taken from her. She wasn't sure that she could let him into her life as anything more than a friend or a companion. Not only that, but she hadn't the faintest idea how these things worked, so even with all her common sense and intellect, it didn't mean she could figure out what to do. She had always depended on her ability to see through other people's facades, but she equally depended on her ability to not let anyone see through her own. Deidara had always been able to see right through her, and she could not let that happen right now. She was scared, and she could not let him know. It would kill her with humiliation if he found out.  
  
There was only one solution for that. To shut down. Completely. And that's what she did. She took a deep breath with her eyes shut, and when she opened them again, she was carefully blank faced. She let go of his shirt, dropped her hands, spun around and walked off. That was the only thing that she could think of doing at the moment. The only thing that would keep her pride and heart intact.  _Pfft, not that I have a heart or anything_ , she tried to convince herself as she strolled off. Meanwhile...   
  
Deidara just stood with his arms still in the position they were before, looking down to where Hitori was all of a few seconds ago. His mind was still quite blank, and when he snapped out of it, he realised that screaming "WHAT THE FUCK?!?!" from the mountain tops would be nowhere near enough to convey his confusion. She just shut down. It was like one of those moments where you think about how something will pan out, only that it ends not just differently, but so differently that it hits you like a ten tonne anvil. He thought that finally, she might open up a little more. Not just about her past, or her favourite way to kill. About what was running through her head. She was so unreadable, and it drove him nuts.   
  
He had honestly no idea why he was being such a god damn woman about this whole thing, but it wasn't like anything like this had happened before. Usually his interaction with women ranged from being in an Akatsuki meeting which involved Konan being present, and she barely ever said a word, to taking a half drunk, attractive woman back to his room and having some fun. Nothing like this. If a woman turned him down he normally just....well....actually...no woman ever turned him down before. In fact, they usually came to him. Most of the ones that hit on him were actually rather interested in his mysterious and potentially dangerous nature. He was the typical bad-boy type. And not like he would turn them down if they were attractive and willing. He just wasn't the tender, chivalrous, affectionate type of guy.   
  
_Ah, fuck my life. This is ridiculous! I am officially the most pathetic male I know. Worrying about her for 9 fucking years, moving closer to her in my sleep, allowing her to beat me until I'm black and blue, cooking breakfast. Now this? What the hell is wrong with me?_  He thought to himself and rubbed his face with his hands irritably. He was dying to blow something up, just to try and prove to himself that he was not going soft, and it was simply the result of the shock of being reunited with Hitori which was making him act like a complete idiot (By his standards, anyway). He was feeling way out of his comfort zone, and he didn't know whether to be pissed off, or...well, he just didn't know.  
  
Eventually, he started following after Hitori who was just heading back into the trees, for lack of not knowing what else to do. A little voice in his head kept saying that he fucked it up, that he took it too far and ruined their friendship by doing something so hopeless, but the voice was promptly shoved back from where it came in his mind. The only thing that he knew for sure, was that it was going to get awkward. And exceedingly so. It was something that he wasn't really looking forward to, and to save himself from the earliest possible confrontation, he stayed a few yards behind Hitori as they leapt through the trees on the way home.   
  
When they did arrive back home, it was getting rather dark, and Hitori busied herself by patching up any bruises, cuts, grazes that she might have and leaving out some medical supplies for Deidara just in case he needed to use them. She certainly wasn't going to heal any superficial wounds that he had, especially when she had no idea how to act around him now. The only knowledge of romantic stuff she had was just talk around the village and between some of the hospital staff, who could be quite the gossips at times, which made sense considering that they hung around every single patient they had, and people being in the hospital had a strange way of uncovering facts and feelings.   
  
She knew that when someone kissed you, that usually meant that they liked you or at least wanted you. But that was impossible. Deidara was her friend, and she brushed it aside by telling herself that they probably just both had a weak moment. She figured that with his curious nature, and persistence that he would probably ask her about her reaction sooner or later, and she would have to decide carefully on what to say to him when the time came. In a house as small as this one, she couldn't possibly avoid him, and at one point she seriously considered just wandering around, doing anything she needed to whilst using her jutsu. As tempting as it was, she quickly dispelled the thought since it would make her look like a coward.   
  
While Hitori was thinking, she went through her nightly routine like a robot, not even realising that she had somehow managed to pack away all the groceries and other supplies they had gotten in town, have something to eat, have a shower, and by the time she realised this, she was pretty much ready for bed. It was completely dark by the time she had finished it all.   
  
At that moment, Deidara walked in the room, fresh from a shower, and without sparing a glance in her direction, he walked over to his pack and rummaged through it for a few minutes. Hitori took that chance to jump into bed and get comfortable and pretend that she was trying to go to sleep just in case he was going to try talking to her. She was relieved when he walked out of the room without a word or glance, let alone acknowledging her presence or existence at all, shutting the door behind him.  _Well, now it's obvious that he's just going to ignore me. But that's alright with me for the time being_... she thought as she stretched and yawned sleepily. This was the first time that she was feeling worn out in a long time.  _Nothing like a day full of fighting and all that pathetic emotional shit to wear myself out_. She rolled over lazily and snuggled into the pillow more and sighed quietly hoping that sleep would take her as soon as possible.  
  
On the other hand, Deidara was laying down on the small couch, doing everything in his power to sleep, which seemed to be avoiding him like the plague, or like...some other fancy and creative metaphor describing his situation. He was so pissed off, furious, irritated, and a little offended that he couldn't think straight. He didn't really know why he was angry either, which served to anger him more. It was Hitori's fault that she didn't know what to do, but of all things, shutting down completely was most definitely not the desired or rational reaction. At least not to him. But to her, that seemed to be the only option since it didn't take her that long to act on it.   
  
They had never stayed angry at each other for long back in the day, but they had both grown more mature, and more immature at the same time over the years, and they were probably more stubborn and hot-headed. As well as being incredibly sadistic now. Who knows when it would get sorted out, but all Deidara knew was that he wasn't in the mood for it to be any time soon. He still couldn't figure out for the life of him why she would just clam up like that, but he had a feeling that it wasn't just because of her inexperience in that situation.   
  
His mind kept on having an internal conversation (an argument, more or less) until exhaustion finally took over and let him sleep...  
  
\------------------------------------------------  
  
_BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! BEEP!_  
  
The endlessly obnoxious sound continued as both Hitori and Deidara slowly wake up and regained awareness of their surroundings. They both groaned irritably in unison.  
  
"Hitori...turn off the alarm 'fore someone hears..." Deidara drawled sleepily as he nudged Hitori's half-asleep figure.  
  
She just grumbled curses in response and got up.  At least she knew that had to be out of there as soon as possible, instead of whining about having five more minutes as her lazy, Aryan looking companion did. She turned off the alarm and went to use the bathroom, all the while telling Deidara to get the hell out of bed. Slowly, he complied and dragged himself out of bed and got dressed. He used the bathroom after Hitori came out, and a few minutes later, they were ready to go.   
  
The window was closed, so Hitori pushed it fully open and Deidara leapt out and landed quietly on the ground beneath him. With a brief glance around the make sure that nothing was left behind, Hitori jumped out of the window as well and landed even quieter than Deidara on the ground next to him. They glanced at each other for a moment and with a single nod, they started off in the direction of the trees.  
  
\---------  
  
Later that day, they arrived at the next village. It was much bigger than the last and was probably more of a town than a village. The place was crowded with people and Hitori guessed that something special was probably going on. Her thoughts were confirmed when Deidara picked up a colourful flyer from the ground saying that there was going to be a fireworks festival that night.  
  
"Well, that explains the crowd. Sounds fun, we should stay for it, yeah. I've never seen fireworks before" Hitori said in a cheerful voice. It had been a while since they had had some proper down time to just do whatever they pleased.  
  
"Either have I." Deidara replied with an equally cheerful tone.   
  
They kept walking around the town, and got themselves something to eat while waiting around for the fireworks to start. Luckily, they didn't have to wait long since the sun was already beginning to set when they first arrived in the town. They made their way over with the crowd to the large hill a few minutes walk away overlooking a large farm like area and sat down a little ways from most of the crowd.   
  
After around half an hour of waiting, the first firework lit up the night sky in a beautiful array of blue sparks. The next was a little smaller but just as fascinating with red flecks decorating the sky. The crowd made 'oh' and 'ah' sounds each time a firework went off and spread it's colours across the heavens. The last few were let off around ten minutes later, and there one a small green one, with two larger ones, one purple and one a silver with gold undertones colour. Then there was a huge blue one that illuminated not just the sky, but also gave the faces sitting on the hill a blue tinge as they smiled up at the beauty of the sight, and the sky became dark once again.   
  
Slowly, the crowd began to thin and people moved away, back to their homes and back to whatever they were doing before. Hitori and Deidara, however, stayed sitting on the hill, still quite amazed at the sight they had just seen.  
  
"That was....." Deidara stuttered and trailed off before he could even think of a word to describe it.  
  
".....amazing...." Hitori finished his sentence for him, and turned to him. Deidara thought that she was just as amazing as the fireworks display at that moment. She had such an alive, radiant expression, and her eyes were brighter than any of the fireworks they saw that night. Her pale grey eyes, looked an almost luminescent silver in the moonlight and her faint smile displayed more happiness than the biggest of grins. He'd never seen her so happy before.   
  
By the same token, he probably looked the same. They had never seen anything like this before, and it felt like ...just for a while...they could be kids again and enjoy something that they weren't able to when they actually were kids, not children that they were more like almost adults in kids bodies.  
  
They hadn't been able to feel that way since their lives had taken a turn for the absolute, and irrevocable worst. They had both been left on their own, doing anything they could do survive. It certainly helped when they found each other, but things were getting harder as they were getting older, and soon they would have to find somewhere to stay for more permanently and try and get some work instead of stealing money, or food any chance they could. Just to survive.  
  
As they sat, revelling silently in the beauty of it, for pre-teens, their heads were both reeling with questions that should be beyond their years, but when it all came down to it, they were both much more mature than  most their age. Deidara was the first to speak.  
  
"Don't you think that fireworks are so artistic? Just a moment of beauty, then it's gone as quick as it came..." he said quietly, his gaze inward even though his head was tilted towards the sky. Hitori simply looked at him as her gaze also turned inward for a moment and with a wistful smile, nodded and made a sound of approval, just loud enough so he would hear it. He murmured his acknowledgement and started looking at the sky again, instead of just staring off into space.   
  
Most of the crowd had moved off already, except for a few couples who seemed wrapped up in their own little worlds. After about an hour, it was only Hitori and Deidara left sitting on the hill, staring at the stars. They had barely said a word to each other that whole hour, and when the sound of a twig snapping occurred, it brought them both back to the real world and out of their thoughts.   
  
It was dead silent after that, and Hitori's instincts were screaming that there was presences very close to them. They may not have looked it too much, but they were both instantly on their guard as their intuition told them something was wrong. Still and quiet as possible, they listened as hard as they could for any signs of sudden movement.   
  
A man dressed in shinobi attire appeared in front of them so suddenly that they both flinched and they both stood up and took up their version of a fighting stance. Inwardly, they both knew that it was probably impossible for them to stand up against a proper ninja, and whatever hope was lingering inside them was entirely dissolved when another shinobi, dressed the same appeared behind them. They were both wearing masks and had ninjato strapped to their back.   
  
Deidara had a thought that they were probably the ANBU that every hidden village had and he knew that they would have no chance against them. They were experts in the darker sides of shinobi work, not that there was exactly a good side, so to speak. It was ridiculously naive to think that they could defeat them, let alone get away since they clearly had something that they wanted from them, but Deidara wasn't going to go down without a fight, and he knew that Hitori would be exactly the same, no matter how much more logical and rational her train of thought was.   
  
"What do you want from us?" Hitori said, her voice shaking slightly, and her heart pounding as the adrenalin began to rush through her veins.  
  
"We have been ordered to retrieve an item that it believed to be in your possession. It is a diamond ring. Return it, and we will spare your lives." the first ANBU spoke tonelessly, not making any sort of threatening movement.   
  
Shit! Fuck! We sold that two days ago! Hitori sighed inwardly at the thought of trying to negotiate with these guys. Even if they did tell them where they sold it, and did everything they could to get it back, they would most likely end up getting killed anyway.   
  
"Too late, we sold it straight after we stole it" Hitori sounded a little more confident than she felt, and mentally shook her head as she waited for the inevitable.   
  
"You two stole it?" the second ANBU asked, sounding a little confused at the idea of these two...kids stealing a valuable ring out of a nobleman's home.  
  
"Hell yeah we did" Deidara spat out, his anger rising at the indirect insult.  
  
The two ANBU gave each other a quick nod and lunged at Hitori and Deidara. They jumped in different directions, just barely getting out of the way of the grasp of each ANBU. They both started into a dead run and it was barely a moment before the ANBU caught up to them with relative ease.  
  
Then as if fate were finally throwing some luck their way, the full moon came out from behind a small cloud and cast small shadows on the ground. YES! _Hitori yelled inwardly and she knew that she could take them by surprise now, even though she wouldn't be able to hold the jutsu for very long, maybe just long enough to give them more of a chance._  
  
She disappeared and the pursuing ANBU made a sound of confusion and stopped running. Hitori crept quietly around behind him and drew her only kunai. She knew she only had one chance, and she had to stop him from moving, then she could help Deidara, who was struggling in vain, doing all that he could to get out of the nin's grip. She held onto the kunai tightly, and swung her arm down to lodge it in the back of the thigh of ANBU who was standing in front of her, looking around frantically.  
  
It made contact and with a loud yell of pain from the nin, Hitori pushed it into the nin's leg as far as she could before jumping backwards out of his range. The jutsu instantly released itself, and Hitori began to pant slightly from the effort of holding the jutsu as perfectly as she could. The nin fell to the ground groaning in pain and clutching his leg, and Hitori heard Deidara's cursing and yelling at the nin to let him go.   
  
The nin suddenly drew a kunai and held it to Deidara's throat, and with a low growl and a few muttered curses, he stopped struggling instantly. Hitori called out to him and made a move to start towards him, but stopped as he looked over to her with a look that said 'Don't you dare'. She furrowed her eyebrows even more so, and didn't even realise that the the other nin was getting up until Deidara called out to her in distress and by then it was already too late. The shinobi had drawn a kunai and already had snaked one arm around her waist and it held the kunai to her neck.   
  
"You move, you die. And so does your friend" he spoke in a low and dangerous voice laced with pain in her ear and she cringed a little at the thought.  
  
And then, something that no one had expected happened. Deidara suddenly stopped cursing and smirked deviously, and let go of one of his hands that was trying to pry off the nin's arm. He opened his hand, palm facing the ground, and Hitori could have sworn that something small and white seemed to...drop out of his....hand...and fall on the ground. It was too dark to see what it was exactly, or where it went so she just had to trust that he did something to save himself at the least.   
  
I wish I had practised this a little more! Please, please, please let it work!  _Deidara pleaded mentally, and concentrated as much as he could in that moment. He felt the little white object move towards Hitori and go behind her to and jump up on the ANBU's back who, thankfully, with Hitori's struggling, didn't seem to notice._  
  
"Hitori, I'm sorry." Deidara said quietly, and tried as hard as he could to drown out the sound of Hitori's screaming, asking him what he did, and to save himself.  
  
Then there was an small explosion and Hitori began to feel very light-headed, and her vision started to blur and shake and she felt herself fall to the ground. She faintly felt a warm liquid dripping down her legs, but she paid it no heed as she hit the ground, barely able to use her own arms to soften her landing. She was still barely concious, but everything was rather hazy and spinning.  
  
Meanwhile, Deidara still couldn't get out of the grasp of the nin, which tightened unconsciously when he realised that his comrade was dead. Killed by the little kid whose throat he was holding a kunai to. But the thing that didn't make sense to him, was that there was no way in hell _that this....brat...could have made an explosion from that distance without a exploding tag, and it would be impossible for these kids to get them without stealing them from a shinobi, which wouldn't be an easy task._  
  
Things made a little more sense, when the light of the moon shone on the brat's hand and there seemed to be a....mouth on it. He figured it was most likely a kekkai genkai or some sort of clan jutsu, which could certainly come in handy. He had the fleeting thought that maybe that's how he made the explosion, even though it seemed quite impossible. He might even get a promotion if he brought the kid back with him.  
  
"Seems like you are a little too valuable to kill, brat. I'll be taking you back to Iwagakure with me. The Tsuchikage will certainly find you interesting." the nin said with a hint of triumph and laughed a little at Deidara's reaction of trying even harder to escape his grip.   
  
The last thing Deidara wanted to happen was for Hitori to be on her own again, but if it meant that she survived, he'd just have to accept it and so would she. He couldn't stand the idea of being taken to a hidden village he'd only heard bad things about, but it seemed he didn't have a choice.   
  
Hitori came back to conciousness and used the last of her strength to scream out to Deidara as loud as she could, from what she could see, he was moving further and further away from her in the clutches of the other ANBU member and drifted away into the night.   
  
And with that, she finally passed out...   
  
\-----------------------------------------  
  
Deidara woke up the next morning with some serious back pain. Sleeping on that small couch did not do any good at all. He kind of regretted not just swallowing his pride and sleeping in with Hitori, even though he was incredibly pissed off with her.   
  
With quite a lot of discomfort, he got out of his makeshift bed, and slowly made his way towards the kitchen, while trying to stretch out his back to relieve some of the tightness in the muscles. Before he could begin making some breakfast for himself, he noticed a note on the counter, next to a small scroll.   
  
_I'll be back. Don't go anywhere._  
  
Hitori.   
  
Deidara opened up the scroll sitting next to the note. It was encrypted to shit house and the hell if he could figure out what it said. However, when he accidentally dropped the note Hitori left, and it landed on the other side, he noticed that she had already written down the contents of the scroll on the other side.   
  
_You have a mission available. It's the usual. Go to the village named Ashinami, about half a day's travel directly north-east, and assassinate the man known as Sozoku who runs a small crime syndicate out of the village. Apparently, he's been terrorising the villagers a little, demanding that they pay him for living on 'his land'. Shouldn't be too much trouble. We'll send your pay as soon as the guy who asked us to do it sends us the funds._  
  
Be careful.  
  
Sighing, Deidara put both the scroll and the note down. No doubt that Hitori probably left the information on the other side just so he would know what she was doing if he took the time to investigate. The last two words of the letter rung in his head, and he couldn't agree more with whoever wrote it. Sure, he was still pissed at her, but that didn't mean he wanted her to die, let alone get hurt.   
  
He convinced himself that she would be fine and made himself some breakfast. He sat down on the couch and ate in silence and soon enough he was incredibly bored. He decided to try and have a nap, since he didn't sleep very well that night (no wonder) and he wandered in and flopped down on the bed. It didn't take long for his eyelids to get heavier, and eventually fall asleep.  
  
Several hours later, he woke to the sound of the door being slammed open, and what seemed like groans of pain along with enough curses to rival Hidan. After a moment, he realised it was probably just Hitori coming back from her mission. The second thought struck him like a brick to the face is that by the sound of it, she was injured. He jumped up and ran out of the bedroom to find her stumbling towards the place he had just come from and without a word or glance between them, he helped her to the bedroom and watched with a faint hint of worry as she rummaged through her medical supplies for something.   
  
Roughly half a minute later, she pulled out a syringe and without any hesitation, stuck in right into her neck. She kept on looking through her pack as the needle dangled from her neck, it's contents slowly disappearing into her bloodstream to do kami knows what. She eventually pulled out a large roll of bandages and sat straight down on the floor after unstrapping her katana and setting it down on the bed.   
  
She pulled off her blood-soaked fingerless, elbow length glove from her left arm, and hissed at the sight of the large, deep gash that went down the majority of her lower arm. She muttered something about troublesome matters and shook her head as she closed her eyes, and after a minute or two, she opened her eyes again after the skin had closed and the only sign of the wound was a large red line where the cut used to be. Hitori huffed faintly in approval, lowered her arm and directed her gaze down at her right leg which seemed to have nasty burn covering about a third of her calf.   
  
After she had literally peeled off her mesh legging and taken care of the burn, and wrapping both of the wounds up with the roll of bandages, she just sat there leaning against the wall, still for a few minutes, eyes shut and concentrating hard. It took Deidara a minute to figure out that she was actually healing herself from the inside, and with that thought, he became extremely impressed. Nevertheless, he was still torn between being angry and concerned for her.   
  
He was snapped out of his thoughts with Hitori getting up, removing the syringe from her neck, which she had seemed to almost have forgotten about, and start taking off her clothes. Instantly, his thoughts went from something along the lines of "Ah, I hope that stupid bitch is alright. Not that I really care, I mean she did fully reject me and all, even though she did make me kiss her again..." etcetera, to "Oh. My. Fucking. God. Please, feel free continue with the removal of your clothes."  
  
When she was just about to take off her undergarments, she vanished into thin air, and after a moment of attempting to figure out if he was still asleep and just dreaming or not, he had an epiphany as to what she did. _Sneaky woman. Using her jutsu to ruin my fun, perverted as it may be....But...but she started it by stripping off in front of me!_  He argued with himself mentally and if she wasn't mumbling and grumbling about troublesome missions and stupid shinobi he wouldn't have known that she'd left the room, leaving her clothes drenched in blood and water on the floor.   
  
After a few moments, the sound of the shower muffled by the bathroom door filled the house, and he figured that now would be a good time to make some dinner and then ask her about what the fuck happened to her.  
  
A short while later, the bathroom door opened, revealing no one behind it, and as Hitori walked through the house, still concealed by her jutsu, leaving a trail of water on the ground as she walked, still muttering various curses, to the bedroom to grab her towel, which she had somehow managed to leave in there. While she was getting dressed, she smelt dinner and instantly sighed. She totally hadn't realised how hungry she was until now. This morning before she left, she only had an apple and some tea, assuming that the mission would go easier, so she could just get some take-away on the way back.   
  
She strolled out of the bedroom with a vicious scowl plastered on her face which may have softened slightly when she smelt her favourite; miso soup with pork. And to top it off, there was a large bottle of sake sitting right next to her bowl. The scowl softened a little more when she realised Deidara knew her well enough to know that this is probably exactly what she would have done for herself and he came out of the bathroom a moment later and with an unsure expression on his face, he brought the two bowls over to the small table and Hitori brought the bottle of sake and two cups. They sat down, and again, without words or glances, Deidara opened the bottle of sake and Hitori began to almost inhale the soup. It wasn't the best she'd ever had, but regardless it was still good considering Deidara probably didn't have the chance to cook too much.   
  
Without noticing her mouthful of soup and pork, Deidara took this chance to speak up.  
  
"Um...what the fuck happened today?" he asked and shook his head at the sight of Hitori turning towards him, cheeks ballooned out slightly from all the soup in her mouth, and laughed softly when she swallowed and smirked a little when she figured out what she must have looked like at that moment.  
  
"Basically, the guy I was supposed to take out, was actually much more of a big shot than we thought. Apparently, his business goes all the way up north. So he had actually some pretty decent shinobi working for him, yeah. There was a guy there that set off some explosive tags after I had actually killed Sozoku, which gave me that nice burn on my leg. Then a missing nin from Kiri turned up, which was certainly interesting. I've been training with my timing for Kage Bunshin, which came in handy because at one point, he used Suirō no Jutsu, which luckily enough, only got my clone instead of me, yeah. " she quickly finished off her soup and then began talking again as she poured sake into the two cups.  
  
"Anyway, I used a Chidori to take him out and that was all fine,  _unntiiiilll_...I came along another missing fucking nin from Kiri. I think I recognised him from the Bingo Book, but it's been a while since I actually perused through it. This Sozoku guy certainly seemed to have a taste for hiring them, though I don't blame him, this guy was pretty sadistic." she growled in irritation. They both drained their cups and Hitori filled them again while Deidara spoke.  
  
"That's pretty much a given for most Mist ninja, yeah. You should meet Kisame. The guy is actually pretty funny sometimes. But he is probably one of the most sadistic shinobi I know" Deidara said with a little laughter at the memory of drinking and playing pool once at the Akatsuki headquarters in Amegakure with Kisame when they had some down time.   
  
"He gave me the nice laceration on my arm, and very nearly missed taking my head off at one point. But he was the quick fight type, and didn't have the stamina or the chakra reserves to keep up with me and I took him out pretty easily after that. To his credit, he did give me some difficulty though, yeah. After that, there was a nin who was probably a taijutsu expert, and I'll admit, he gave me a bit of trouble too. Then it was just lame guards who thought they could stand up to a little girl and had no hesitation about trying to take me out, which I'm sure you figured out is a big mistake. I don't bother killing witnesses unless it's in my orders to do so, but if someone attacks me, I'll kill them either way, yeah." she smirked, but evilly, hiding nothing about her train of thought.   
  
"With the combination of having several fights, one after the other, I was just not in the mood for them, and I basically ended up killing everyone in the building before making my way out of the village. My arm was a real pain, since it was so deep and believe it or not, my body doesn't really take to me healing it for some reason, so it took me a while to stop the bleeding and do a little bit of first aid on it. My leg was alright, the burn wasn't that bad in the first place. Other than that, I was just a bit battered and bruised from my fight with the taijutsu guy." she drank her sake and put the cup back down.  
  
"So, what was the stuff in that syringe you just shoved into your neck? Something to help you heal?" Deidara speculated and drained his sake cup again before filling his and Hitori's cups again.  
  
She nodded. "It's basically a medicine that allows the brain to boost the cells in your body that repair injury and help to fight disease, illness and such. I developed it after I got some pretty serious injuries on a mission that kept me out of commission for like a whole week. I probably wouldn't have done it if I didn't get injured. Now it's pretty widely used in Konoha. Mostly on patients who have some really nuts injuries and a pretty low rate of survival, yeah." Hitori said , recalling the memories of the head medic telling her that she wouldn't be doing any missions for a week. She very nearly had to be strapped down to the bed because of her reaction to the news.  
  
"Oh, and I think we should probably move tomorrow. Just in case, yeah." Hitori said before downing her cup again, and sitting back against the couch and giving herself a quick medical check to make sure everything was back in working order. She focused on her arm the most, since a few tendons had been sliced clean through, and it had made things a little odd sometimes when she moved her arm a certain way. Her left arm had already been fucked over by one of the Tsuchikage's jonin, there was no need for it to be made any worse.  
  
Her head lolled forward until her chin was on her chest and she grumbled in realisation as she remembered that she would be needing new gloves, as well as mesh leggings. Basically, she just needed some new shinobi attire in general.  
  
_Ugh, more mission money spent on something other than alcohol and food. Damn_ , she thought as she filled her cup with sake and gulped it down with ease. She was starting to feel the effects of it, but as usual, it never did much to her unless she smashed down at least two bottles by herself. She had just been drinking too much, for too long, so it was only natural that she had a high tolerance for alcohol. Drinking just....helped.  
  
After they finished the bottle, Deidara toddled off to have a quick shower, before going back to the bedroom to find Hitori already half asleep.  
  
They both soon fell into a deep sleep, exhausted from the day's chaos...  
  
\-------------------------------  
  
The next day, they got up bright and early, packed up, and travelled until dark before finding an inn at a small village and crashed for the night. They got up early again and ran until sunset before finding similar spot to the previous one and set up camp (err, house) and settled in. Surprisingly, nothing too major had happened over those days, which was a refreshing change, and they enjoyed a nice dinner before getting a good night's rest.   
  
Little did they know that the very near future would make up for a year of 'nothing major happening'...  
  
\----------------------------  
  
It was ground-breaking that they were all gathered in Amegakure for once. Well, what was left of them anyway. They sat in a dimly lit room, and waited for their leader to join them. A few minutes of waiting later, and he walked in, at a calm, unhurried pace. He sat down in the chair facing all of them directly, and waited a few moments before he spoke in a quiet voice that demanded your attention in an impossibly subtle way.  
  
"There have been rumours brought to my attention of a disturbance with details that have undoubtedly caught my interest." he waited another few moments before speaking again, in the same tone, completely devoid of emotion, before sitting his elbows on the table and lacing his fingers together. "Kisame, Itachi, please elaborate on this for us."  
  
He turned his head towards the large, blue skinned man, who looked more like a shark than a human, and in comparison the rather normal looking, aside from the red eyes, smaller male sitting beside him. The latter spoke in a similar quiet voice to the leader, one lacking emotion.  
  
"Yes. We have heard of a fight between an ANBU cell and two shinobi. One was described as a small to average sized female dressed in all black, with black hair and a pale complexion. The other however, was the one that caught our attention. A male of average build and height with long blond hair, dressed in dark blue attire who seemed to use explosives."  
  
The leader nodded once in understanding. "Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Although it may turn out to be nothing, your vigilance is something to be praised. I will have my sources verify the information immediately."  
  
"Does this mean that Deidara-senpai might be alive after all?" one of the others spoke in a louder, hopeful voice that completely contradicted the two quieter and emotionless ones before it.   
  
The blue skinned man chuckled and spoke up. "Maybe. Maybe not. We might just have to wait and see how things play out Tobi" he finished with another small chuckle.  
  
"When I have been notified of the authenticity of this rumour, you will all be informed of the result and the actions we will take if we discover that Deidara is still alive." the leader spoke again with a air of finality. "Until then, you are all ordered to stay alert and look out for any more possible signs."   
  
With that he quietly stood up from his seat and strolled out of the room, the blue haired woman following suit, while the four (or five?) remaining people sat for a moment before getting up and walking out of the room as well, all the while Tobi was blabbering on about how good it would be if 'Deidara-senpai' was still alive.....


	9. Chapter 9 - Discoveries

** Chapter 9 - Discoveries **

  
Deidara woke to the sound of Hitori growling low in her throat. He opened his eyes to find her three feet away from him on her bed, and looking sort of asleep. He raised an eyebrow while watching Hitori tossing and turning in a vain attempt to try and get comfortable. She ended up laying in on her side, facing away from him, and from what he could see in the light of the moon shining through the trees, she looked like she was about to tear her pillow to shreds with her bare hands.  
  
Before he gave her a chance to actually think of doing that and go through with it, he spoke. "Oi, what the hell is wrong with you?" he said pointedly, his voice still a little raspy from not using it since last night.  
  
She turned her head so that he could see only the side of her profile, and anger was stamped all over her features and her eyes said murder.   
  
"I have been waking up every half an hour since I fell asleep 4 hours ago. I am  _thoroughly displeased_  with my inability to go to sleep and stay asleep." she retorted sharply and turned her head back flat on the pillow again, and they both knew that the anger in her voice was obviously not directed at him. Deidara didn't bother replying since he knew that nothing he said would help and since he didn't feel like going back to sleep yet, he just laid there quietly, staring at the ceiling.  
  
He was in a rather placid mood until he remember what happened between them several days ago, and he promptly became thoroughly displeased as well. She noticed the abrupt change in his demeanour and wondering what the hell his deal was, she rolled over to face him and give him a questioning look. He was laying on his back, with his arms crossed under his head, and it took him a moment to decide what to do when he guessed that she was looking at him, and waiting for him to explain why he was mad all of a sudden.  
  
In that moment of indecision, he toyed with the mature and...less mature option. The mature one being, explain to her what was the problem in a civil and adult manner. The less mature one was, do exactly what she did to him; walk away. For all his hot-headedness, he actually was considering the first option for a few moments before realising that Hitori seemed to have no problem taking the second option the other day, and that thought alone made his mind up for him.   
  
He uncrossed his arms from under his head, sat up and leant back on them for a few seconds, just trying to exaggerate the vindictiveness of his walking away the next moment. With a barely audible sound in the back of his throat, he got up, still a little stiff from sleeping, and walked straight out of the bedroom, leaving a now rather confused Hitori laying in bed, looking at the spot Deidara was laying in just a few moments ago.   
  
She laid there for a good 10 minutes wondering what the hell his deal was, and then it hit her. He seemed to be rather livid after she basically rejected him indirectly the other day, and realised that was probably the cause. It would make sense, even if they were sitting down on the couch, enjoying sake and a good conversation last night. But she did kind of come home battered and bruised, just hanging onto her conciousness, so it would be fair enough if he decided to forget the issue for the night, or the more likely reason was that with all the fuss, he just forgot to be angry at her.  
  
Meanwhile, Deidara was sitting on the bathroom floor, leaning his back against the wall and with his right knee propped up and his right arm sitting on it. Yes, he was insanely annoyed with Hitori, but he knew that if he bottled it up, someday he would snap and it would turn out much worse. But on the other hand, he had no idea how to go about talking it out with her, and it's not like she'd be interested in the confrontation. She had become even less open than he was now, even with him.  
  
Then there was also the odd feelings that had been stirring up in him lately. He was absolutely clueless (which seemed to be happening quite a lot lately) and hated that these things had to happen at what was most likely going to be a huge turning point in his life. Hitori was the same. She was as knowledgeable and understanding as a brick wall when it came to these things, and quite often had the emotional capacity of said brick wall, but these new odd feelings were ruining her idea of being emotionally impenetrable.  
  
At the same moment, they both threaded their fingers into their hair tightly, and pulled, enough to make it hurt, so that hopefully these ridiculous notions of unnatural feelings and thoughts about one another would get the hell out of their heads. After a moment of gradually pulling tighter, as the irritating voices in their heads got louder and more unbearable, Deidara started hitting the back of his head up against the wall behind him, and Hitori just started hitting her forehead with the heel of her palm. Hitting themselves wouldn't solve the problem at all, but hopefully it would kill enough brain cells to make them stop thinking about such illogical nonsense. It was too much for them right now.   
  
Even though the life of a mission nin was surprisingly easy for them, it was all thanks to Hitori's luck for being in Konoha's favour because of her talent and for her earning so much money by nearly dying and also the possibility of being captured and tortured to death, as well as taking high ranking and huge money making missions that most shinobi wouldn't have been able to complete successfully. She was earning money to feed them both, risking her life to kill anyone after them, and not just for her own sake, but to protect him as well.   
  
In the next few minutes, Deidara would have two different revelations that would change the direction of life he would take more than he could ever realise. And it was then that Deidara realised what (or who) was the problem.   
  
 _It was him._  
  
Hitori had to work harder to support them both and be more careful so that his being alive wouldn't be discovered by anyone, the Akatsuki in particular. She didn't have to worry about that before he came into her life again. When they were kids it was easier to have someone else there to help out, but now, when they were both infinitely capable of looking after themselves, they didn't really  _need_  each other to survive any more.  
  
He never realised how much things had changed until now. He couldn't believe how much trouble he was putting Hitori through. Suddenly, he remembered what she said long ago, and realised that it couldn't be more true.  
  
 _"Silly Deidara, without my jutsu, we would barely be able to eat! You are just the one who creates the distractions, not I need them..."_  
  
She was right. If it wasn't for her, they probably wouldn't have survived. They would have more than likely starved to death. It was with the jutsu that she hates so much that allowed them to get their hands on enough money and food to support themselves. And nothing much had changed.  
  
 _Fuck, I can't put her through this. I have to leave. Knowing my luck, she'll end up getting killed for my sake. And that's the last thing I want. As much as I hate to admit it, I care about her way too much to allow that to happen._  
  
The second revelation he had was much more shocking.   
  
Did he... _love_  Hitori?  
  
His mind instantly went into overdrive. He knew that he cared about her probably just as much as he valued his art, and probably more than his own life (even though his lack of self-preservation didn't make it that hard to do so) and it would make sense. He started going through every little detail of interaction between them that could suggest that his theory was true.  
  
One, moving closer to her in his sleep (His masculine side shuddered at the memory).  
  
Two, he got a slight tingle in his chest when Hitori was looking at him several times, which much to his chagrin, was happening more and more often of late.  
  
Three, how shocked and almost upset he was when he found out Hitori was a virgin. He remembered his head were filled with thoughts about every guy who had even laid an eye of her being too stupid to notice how attractive she was. As well as him thinking about coming onto her later on, and just perving on her every now and then in general.  
  
Four, doing various 'nice' things for her. Such as making breakfast (which didn't turn out so well), buying her favourite take-away for dinner the other night as well as a bottle of her favourite sake etc.  
  
And finally five, the real kicker, the real feather in his cap... _kissing her_. That reason alone should be enough to prove that he liked her, but he was trying to do everything is his power to convince himself that it wasn't possible for him to  _like or love_  anyone, let alone Hitori.  
  
After a few minutes of some serious inner arguing and debating, he just couldn't convince himself that he didn't at the least like her. He'd dug his own grave by dwelling on it and not pushing the thought aside. And it was this that further enforced his need to leave.   
  
For the next few minutes, he thought about whether he should tell her, or just leave while she was asleep or something, and decided on the second option instead so he didn't have to face her. He could just leave a note instead. He got up and went back to the bedroom, to find Hitori sound asleep again. This was his only chance. If he stayed any longer he would probably end up changing his mind, and he couldn't put Hitori in any more danger than he already had.  
  
Quickly, and with all the silence and stealth of an S-class shinobi, he collected up his things, packed a few small items of food and wrote a note. His resolution wavered when Hitori rolled over and then moved all the way over to his side of the bed and snuggled herself into his pillow looking more like a contented cat than her usual permanent scowl or blank faced self. He walked over to her and gently brushed some of the hair out of her face before pressing a soft, chaste kiss to her lips knowing full well that it was the last time it would ever happen.   
  
He left the bedroom and walked out towards the door, and with a small sigh, opened it and walked out into the small clearing. He leapt up into the trees and with a lingering glance over his shoulder, he took off and disappeared into the night.  
  
\------------------------------  
  
The next morning Hitori woke up on Deidara's side of the bed. It slowly occurred to her, that Deidara...was, in fact, not there. She stilled and listened for a moment to figure out if where he was in the house. He might have just been making breakfast for them again (Since the first attempt was a terrible failure and all). She couldn't hear him, and decided to be lazy and use a quick flare of chakra to search for him in the area just outside the house.  
  
Nothing.  
  
She thought it was odd that he left without a word, and when she bothered to open her eyes and roll over, she noticed that there was a note on the dresser. Guessing that it said something unimportant and that he'd be back later, Hitori didn't bother to get up and read it, instead deciding that she could warm up and train a little for a while so that they could spar when he got back.  
  
Gradually, she dragged herself out of bed, and had a quick breakfast before getting changed and taking a few kunai outside, as well as some targets that she hadn't bothered using in a while. They were old, and had so many holes in the that they were most likely going to fall apart any day now, but she figured that getting the use out of them was the best idea. It would be a troublesome task to get more shinobi gear while being so far away from Konoha. Usually, Kakashi just sent her anything she needed in a storage scroll, but it was usually one of his ninken dogs that would bring it, and Hitori always felt bad for making them come so far just to bring her some stuff she could probably live without even though she gave them special treats.  
  
After finally realising that she had been standing in the middle of the clearing, thinking for a few minutes, she quickly set up the targets, in the most odd positions possible, and made herself a goal that in one hour, she would be able to hit the bullseye every single time on every single target. She accomplished this feat in roughly half an hour, and set them up again, and repeating this process until she got seriously bored. She trained with some ninjutsu for a while, and when she finally got bored of that it was roughly half way through the afternoon.  
  
By then, what she blamed on her paranoid missing nin side (which was actually her just being worried about him) she had a sinking feeling that something might have happened and that he might have been found. As high ranking shinobi, as well as infamous missing nin, they were both excellent at not leaving a trail, or making false ones so the idea that they had been tracked there was almost preposterous, but the idea that whoever was tracking them waited until they were separated, since they worked together very well and would be almost impossible to beat lingered mercilessly.   
  
The idea of checking the note came to her mind, just in case he was going somewhere in particular, and that he might be taking a little while longer than she first anticipated came to mind, so with an irritated (worried) huff, she waltzed on inside and into the bedroom. When she saw the note, the heart she convinced herself everyday that she didn't have jumped into her throat, and almost stopped beating completely.  
  
 _Kage-chan,  
  
I've been a burden to you. I hate to admit it, but I care too much about you to continue putting you in more danger than you already are. I have no idea how it happened but the only way I can explain it is that I think that I'm falling for you, and it's even more of a reason for me to stop risking your life to protect not just your own, but mine as well.  
  
Don't worry, I'll be fine and I'll try to contact you soon.  
  
Thank you for everything, and I'm sorry.  
  
Your artistic bomber,  
Dei._  
  
Without a second thought, not even bothering to grab her katana, or anything else, she simply dashed outside, stored the house, attached it to her back quicker than she ever thought she could, and bit her thumb hard enough to draw blood before throwing her left hand on the ground.  
  
"Kuchiyose no Jutsu!"  
  
When her summon appeared in front of her in the usual puff of smoke, it took all she had to compose herself as much as possible.  
  
"Hey Pakkun. Long time, no see, yeah."  
  
\----------------------------------------------------  
  
Deidara was absolutely exhausted. He hadn't stopped running until all of five minutes ago, and now he was just sitting in some random bar that he couldn't even remember entering, trying to stay upright, let alone concious while he relaxed for a few minutes before dragging himself to an inn and sleeping for a week.   
  
He knew that he wouldn't be able to go back in the direction that they had just come from if he wasn't going to risk getting caught, so he went directly east. As usual, he had no idea where he was, but it was hopefully far enough away so whatever trail he might have accidentally left behind in his haste was covered up now. Naturally, missing nin usually got into the habit of not leaving a trail especially in a rush, but there was still a possibility that even the smallest clue could be used. He knew that Hitori was quite a capable tracker, especially with her experience as an assassin, decent tracking abilities were pretty much a given.  
  
He'd been trying his darnedest not to think about leaving her behind, convincing himself that it would be safer for her to not have an ex-Akatsuki member and S-class missing nin around that was wanted by basically every existing hidden village, Iwa, Suna and Konoha in particular. However, if he was around, he could protect her and keep her safe. He knew that when they worked together, they were a very formidable team and could hold their own against mostly anyone, and that thought made his newly discovered heart sink down to his feet, and his usual smirk was nowhere to be found. Almost instantly, he started to regret his decision.   
  
It was too late to go back now. He figured that if she was awake, that she had either not seen the note, or had read it, got pissed off and started to move somewhere else so that he wouldn't find her. He inwardly hoped that she either hadn't seen it, or that she had decided to stay where she was to see if he would change his mind and come back. Unlikely, since that would make her feel vulnerable if he did come back and the idea would probably be a little too sentimental for her taste.   
  
He was snapped out of his thoughts by the bartender asking him if he wanted anything, to which he replied with a grumble of something unintelligible and a shake of the head. With a  exaggerated sigh, he lazily dragged himself out of the seat and walked out of the bar to find an inn and some food.   
  
After about half an hour, he was settled in a shitty room, with a single bed that barely had any springs and dirty shower with a large container of take away that he got from the cleanest looking place around. He ate ravenously and wished that he was bothered enough to go out and get more since he was still hungry. Eventually, he laid down on the mattress and crashed out almost instantly.  
  
\-------------------------------------------  
  
"Pein..." the stoic feminine voice belonging to Konan spoke above the sound of the rain.  
  
The man named Pein leapt up from his seat on the tongue of the large building that looked more like a massive statue of a man, and walked over to his blue-haired partner. They stood silently side by side, and a faint tingle crept through their bodies as their rings began to glow, and after a moment they appeared as coloured silhouettes in the dark cavern. A few minutes later, the silhouette of Zetsu appeared, shaped like a large plant with golden eyes peeking through the darkness. All three figures stayed silent in wait for the other members. The one known as Tobi popped up next, but surprisingly stayed quiet until the last two, Kisame, and the red-eyed Itachi flickered into view.   
  
"I have verified the information about the incident Itachi and Kisame gave us at our last meeting. It seems that it was correct, and the profile matches Deidara all too well. Deidara may not have been killed, but captured. Since we have not heard anything about him being captured, it is unlikely that it is a hidden village. We shall find out everything we need to in due time." he turned his hypnotic, ringed eyes to Tobi, "Tobi, you are to investigate this personally since Deidara was your partner. You should also check surrounding villages for any signs of him. Any information is to be reported directly to me."  
  
"Hai! Tobi will do his best!" Tobi said in his usual cheerful voice.  
  
"Heh, Tobi is a good boy" Zetsu's easygoing white side spoke up before everything went silent again for a few moments.  
  
"As for the rest of you, report anything you find. Dismissed." Pein said, before he disappeared along with Konan.  
  
And with that, the remaining silhouettes dissolved into darkness once more.  
  
\--------------------------------------  
  
"Hey Hitori-chan, what can I do for you?" Pakkun asked to his old friend in his usual gruff voice that didn't quite suit his appearance.  
  
"I need you to track a scent for me. But I may just be thinking too much, so it's not a big deal" Hitori answered trying to cover up her lie as best she could while still being happy to see Pakkun. She held out piece of the note, which she had carefully turned around so Pakkun wouldn't be able to read it.  
  
"Is that okay? It might smell a little like me since it was off a piece of paper I was using" she questioned, again trying to cover up her little white lie. Pakkun was quite smart and she just hoped that he wouldn't be able to discover her lying. The small ninken sniffed the bit of paper for a few moments, closed his eyes and opened them suddenly again.  
  
"I've got it. It's very faint, and you're lucky it isn't too windy so that there isn't more smells mixed in with it. Smells male to me. Is that right?"  
  
"Yep. That would be correct. Shall we?" Hitori said before starting off towards the trees, but Pakkun's voice stopped her.  
  
"Is this male a  _good_  friend of yours? I might have to tell Kakashi about this...I'm sure he'd find it rather intriguing" he spoke with a teasing tone, knowing that Hitori would be incredibly embarrassed if Kakashi found out her being 'involved' with a male of any sort.  
  
He chuckled quietly when Hitori stopped dead in her tracks and stiffened like she was suddenly going into rigor mortis and he restrained his laughter when she turned around to glare at him as icily as she could, even though she couldn't hide the truth in her eyes from him. The ninken decided not to press the matter any further as he hadn't seen her in a while and she did always make him special treats when he dropped off packages to her occasionally.  
  
"Behave you, or no special treats when I see you next, yeah." she spoke with a low voice that indicated she was serious, although she guessed that Pakkun probably knew that she would have a triple serving for him next time they saw each other.  
  
They both started into the trees and they glided through them with ease and made conversation about random things such as what had been happening in the village, what Kakashi had been doing, and Pakkun may have pushed his luck a little more by bringing up this new 'male friend' of Hitori's, to which he received an attempt at a glare, but Hitori could never stay mad at the little ninken.   
  
As it got later into the day, the scent began to gradually get a little easier to pick up and Pakkun estimated that they would probably have many, many hours travel before they got  to their destination, hoping that the 'male friend' (which earned a glare from Hitori) didn't continue travelling.  
  
When evening, and eventually night came, Hitori told Pakkun to go home and get some rest while she travelled further and that she would call him back tomorrow morning first thing. He hesitated, wondering if she would lose the trail, but she assured him that everything would be fine. They bid each other goodnight, and Hitori continued in the direction they had been heading in most of the day.  
  
Deidara must have made an extremely hasty decision if he was distracted enough to not cover his tracks better, make his route a little more erratic and harder to follow, or at least leave a false trail of some sort. She couldn't deny the fact that she was worried about him. Without her there, she couldn't help look after him. He'd have to stay in some backwater inn, or sleep outside in a cave. He would have to eat crappy take-away from stores that don't look too clean but are the only ones around for miles.  
  
She knew he would hate that. After getting out of the Akatsuki and accompanying her, he probably would have assumed that he'd never have to resort to that lack of having somewhere definite and safe(ish) to stay the night with decent food again. She couldn't believe that he made some stupid decision to piss off to nowhere because he thought he was a 'burden'.  
  
 _If only he knew how wrong he was_ , she thought to herself sadly, slowly coming to terms with the fact that she may never see him again, except this time he wasn't taken away by stupid fucking ass-hole shinobi. It was him that made the decision to leave.   
  
 _To abandon her._  
  
When that last thought sunk in, she, rather ungracefully, tripped as she was trying to land on a branch and began to fall to the forest floor. Luckily, yet unluckily, she landed painfully on a rather large branch diagonally for a second long enough for her to flip herself around and grasp onto the branch aided by chakra. She quickly corrected herself and started off again.  
  
Attempting to shake off any dwelling on that last thought, she tried her darnedest to make any thought not relevant to jumping through the trees in the direction she was supposed to be travelling in. Unfortunately, that didn't seem to work too well, as the strangle-hold she had on the lid of that Pandora's box of royal mind fucks found it's way open and every single thought came flooding to every part of her conciousness.  
  
In the next few hours of travel, her pace slowed dramatically as she did everything she could to try and ignore the pathetic thoughts drilling at her mind. After another hour or so, a wonderful, almost miraculous thought came to her. Whenever she wanted to blank her mind, all she did was recite something from the various medical tomes she had stored in a scroll somewhere in her makeshift house.   
  
Luckily, it worked for the most part, and in the next hour she had recited nearly a whole three books with only a few thoughts making their way through the barriers of ridiculously boring medical information that she honestly had no idea how she managed to remember and recall at such odd times, but was infinitely thankful for right now. Her pace was still slowed, and she had a feeling that she had gone a little off track so she decided to quickly summon Pakkun to reconfirm her bearings.  
  
He appeared in a puff of smoke, looking like he had just woken up and she apologised before asking him to make sure she was going the right way so that he could sleep a little longer before she called him out again. He agreed with her logic, and woke himself up for a few moments before pointing out that she just had to start heading the smallest bit south for the next kilometre before continuing her east-ward route. She apologised again, even though he assured her that it was a pretty good idea and that he didn't mind at all before returning back from where he came.   
  
She headed off again, and after another two hours of travel, she had gone through every medical book she had and was now starting to recite hand seals for various jutsus, which to her disappointment didn't last too long at all. Most of her jutsu was all fire based, with a few lightning natured ones, the majority of which based from Chidori, and a couple very basic water jutsu which she had learnt just for the sheer hell of it.  
  
As the late hours of the night drawled on by, Hitori began to feel signs of fatigue, dehydration and severe hunger. She scolded herself, knowing that as a medical nin she should have at least brought a soldier pill to keep herself going for a while longer. Thankfully, there was a small village directly in her path with what looked like a bar, which judging by the lights and cacophony coming from the place, seemed to still be open.  
  
Dragging herself in the place, there was music, and drunk men and women conversing over beer and spirits all over the small but cosy bar. She sat down at the bar, and pull out some emergency money which she always had stashed in a small inner pocket of her shirt before throwing it down on the counter and asking the barkeep to fetch her the biggest glass of water they had, and the largest meal they had.   
  
The bartender seemed to realise that she was travelling, so he quickly got her a drink, which she skulled down in record time, before giving her a re-fill and getting one of the other staff to start cooking her meal. After about fifteen minutes or so, a massive meal filled which on a normal day could easily feed three small adults came out, and it seemed that for a moment everyone in the bar seemed to stop and look at the small girl with hair as dark as the sky outside ravenously munching down on the various food items on the plates and bowls in front of her.  
  
One of the men sitting near to Hitori at the bar, who had undoubtedly had more beers than he could count and was unquestionably 'off-his-chops', cheered and patted her on the back before saying something loud and quite slurred before yelling 'Kanpai!' and downing whatever was left in his glass. Within ten minutes, and four glasses of water later, Hitori had finally finished her meal, and even though the quality wasn't the best, the quantity was something to be praised.  
  
Coming back to reality now that there wasn't food to concentrate on eating, she turned around to look at the other patrons in the bar, and one woman seemed to notice that she had completely devoured the gigantic meal and proceeded to cheer and raise her glass in Hitori's direction. In a rare display of emotion in a public setting, Hitori gave them a silly grin and a laugh before pulling a few more bills out of her emergency money pocket and handing them to the bartender and nodding thankfully to him.  
  
She made her way of the bar, feeling quite a few pounds heavier than she did when she went in, Hitori began to walk slowly out of the village before gradually picking up the pace back to even faster than when she first started, her thoughts now set on getting that stupid idiot back (again). After two hours, she called Pakkun back, who she woke up again, but he seemed well rested and assured her that he would be fine to continue with her.  
  
As it got closer to daybreak, he told her that they were getting very close to where the scent was a lot stronger. Hitori sped up unconsciously, something that did not go unnoticed by Pakkun. He had also noticed that she was acting a little...odd today. Granted that she was a rather odd, socially troubled alcoholic, there usually wasn't a time where the word 'odd' wouldn't be appropriate for describing her. But something just seemed different.  
  
She flinched almost imperceptibly occasionally when he spoke randomly and that she seemed kind of cheerful instead of her usual 'piss-off-I'm-drinking' kind of attitude. And that in itself was a anomaly. If she was going to the extent to summon him to track someone, then something was going on. Something quite serious.  
  
He was snapped out of his thoughts (which may have involved various images at the back of his mind about what present Hitori would have for him next time they saw each other) when they made their way into a village and slowed to a casual walk.   
  
"The scent has gotten much stronger. He may have been here for a while, but with all the smells of the markets and other people, I can't tell whether he's moved on or not. I'll just track the scent as best I can and find out." he spoke after sniffing the air for a few moments.  
  
"Alright. You tell me where to go" Hitori said with anticipation that she hoped Pakkun didn't pick up on, although that wasn't likely.  
  
They walked around the small village, Pakkun concentrating on the smells, and Hitori searching her hardest for that chakra signature that she'd come to recognise just as easily as her own as well as keeping a sharp eye out for that blonde mop of hair and perpetual smirk that she couldn't say she didn't adore.   
  
After a few minutes, Pakkun picked up a stronger scent leading into and away from the town's only inn. He told Hitori that the scent changed when it was coming out of the inn, but there was still the same overall smell. She offered that it was probably just a change of using the inn's shampoo and soap.  
  
He decided not to bring it up, but he noticed that the scent of Hitori mingled in had faded drastically as well. Since the paper she gave him smelt like her as well, it didn't really click with him. But now that the scent had changed, it was easy to realise that this 'male-friend' had some involvement with Hitori, and he was sure that he would be able to figure it out by keeping tabs on Hitori's body language. After being with Kakashi for so long, he had gotten pretty good at reading body language since Kakashi had only one eye showing and he'd had to figure out what he was thinking and feeling going off just that and the faint shadows showing on his mask.  
  
Hitori used her jutsu and made a quick check inside the room Deidara was staying in, just to make sure that he had gone and to see if he had left anything behind just in case it would help her find where he was going. Unfortunately, nothing turned up and it looked like he'd left for good. She didn't dare ask the receptionist about how long ago he'd left because Pakkun would undoubtedly hear, and she couldn't have that since he would easily recognise the description.   
  
With barely covered haste and anxiousness, she met back up with Pakkun and Hitori got him some water and something to eat before sitting down for a bit while he restored his energy. She felt no need to do so as there was adrenalin was pulsing through her veins even while she was sitting, and she had no need for assistance from her medical jutsu for that. After a few minutes, they finished up and Hitori tried to restrain herself from flying off into the distance which she succeeded at...for the most part. Again, Pakkun decided not to bring it up and knew that he was right, that something big was happening and she just couldn't figure out how to react.   
  
They walked through the rest of the town and into the trees again and Hitori's pace was almost a little too fast for the little pug, but he made no move to tell her to slow down, knowing that she either would try to tease him about being slow to change the subject, or she would be too wrapped up in her own thoughts to not realise he was speaking. They ran for the next two hours, and their pace barely slowed at all in that time. Hitori was starting to feel worn out, but would never let her body tell her what to do. She sent some chakra through her, clearing out any lactic acid that had built up, which made her feel better physically, but her emotions were running amok. She had hoped that after a while she would calm down a little, but she was only getting more worked up in the hour after hour that they trailed after Deidara.   
  
After a while of travelling in silence and growing darkness, Hitori suggested to Pakkun that they use the same system as yesterday, and that he should get some sleep, and that she would call him again in a few hours to confirm her direction of travel. Reluctant to leave her alone in this state, Pakkun refused, saying that he was able to go for a few more hours and that when he gets some rest, so should she. Hitori carefully ignores the last part and says that he'll go get some rest in two hours whether he likes it or not. And roughly two hours later, Hitori questions him again, saying that she'll be fine and if he doesn't get some sleep, she'll tell Kakashi he was pushing himself too hard. Kakashi never liked it when Pakkun tired himself out, and got in trouble when he did. And all credit to Pakkun, the smart pug he is, said to Hitori that he'll tell Kakashi about her 'male-friend', which shut her up instantly.  
  
Glad that the mood had lightened a little, he ran and talked with Hitori, allowing her to de-stress slightly and when she had calmed down enough for him to be satisfied, he decided after about an hour that it would be okay to leave her. He was quite exhausted, but he vowed that he would help her out as much as he could so he didn't mind struggling to keep up with her for the last hour. When he left, Hitori stopped for a moment to gather herself, and went she started up again, her pace was just as fast as before, and she thanked her emotional turmoil (as annoying as it was) for putting her in enough shock to continue the flow of adrenalin so that she could continue going at such an inhuman pace for such a long time.  
  
As organised, three hours later, she stopped for a few minutes to summon Pakkun so he could make sure she hadn't gone too far from her path, and luckily, she was basically dead on. The pug also mentioned that the scent is getting stronger, suggesting that they are catching up, which made Hitori's stomach do an unfamiliar flip. Pakkun left as quick as he was summoned and Hitori began to get really sick of drawing blood from her thumb for summonings but she knew that there was no point whining since Pakkun was the only reason that she was on Deidara's trail.  
  
With a deep breath and exhaling with a sigh, she took off into the night.  
  
\--------------------------------------------  
  
"Tobi has found out about Deidara-senpai!" exclaimed the more cheerful than usual voice behind the orange swirling mask with the single eye hole.  
  
"Very well. What have you found out?" asked the emotionless voice of Pein, vastly contrasting to Tobi's.  
  
"Tobi found out that Deidara-senpai was seen in a village a day away from the village that he was first spotted in. But he hasn't been spotted since." Tobi said in a voice that started out happy, but then kind of faded to melancholy on the last part, making it obvious that he was upset that he couldn't find out where his 'senpai' was.  
  
"And did you find anything out about the girl he was seen with?"   
  
"She was with him! They checked into an inn for the night and they left early in the morning. That's all Tobi could find out."   
  
There was silence for a moment as Pein registered this information, before he spoke again, his tone giving away nothing about his thoughts or feelings about the predicament.  
  
"I see. Thank you for the information Tobi. If there is any further developments, you will be notified. Dismissed." Pein said with finality.  
  
Tobi just gave an enthusiastic nod and disappeared in a puff of smoke.  
  
Pein just sat there for a moment, thinking quietly, and as his irritation grew, he hid it flawlessly as always, but not from the woman standing in the dark corner of the room, concealing her presence. He  _may_  have given her a barely there smirk as the beautiful blue-haired woman with the pale complexion stepped into the light, looking straight into his eyes with the disguised but caring look that he could always see in her grey-blue and amber flecked eyes.  
  
"You seem to be rather angered by this news. I think we should consider the possibility that Deidara is with this girl for a very important reason. He was never the type to put up with having a companion unless he had to." Konan spoke calmly, trying to reason with her male partner and make sure that there was room for consideration in this matter.   
  
Pein understood and accepted the truth in her words. She usually was always right about these kind of matters.  
  
"I concur. From the information, I think we could gather that it is not a professional, or hostile relationship between them. It seems that there is a possibility that it is not just friendship either. We have no knowledge of Deidara's past, so there is no way of knowing if he knew her before joining the Akatsuki." he said quietly, thinking about the possibilities.  
  
She nodded faintly before replying, "What course of action do you think would be advisable to take then?"  
  
"I think that we should solve this matter ourselves. I believe the other members of our organisation would be unsuitable for the job considering their lack of personal bonds. If Deidara and this girl are in fact involved I would not feel comfortable separating them, even if Deidara does have an obligation to serve the Akatsuki." he answered with complete honesty, knowing Konan would feel the very same.  
  
"I agree entirely. We both know that we would dislike circumstances that would force us apart, and I would prefer to keep them together if that is the case. It would be quite hypocritical for us to separate them. For shinobi, a life with love is a blessing." Konan said with one of her small smiles, almost in itself explaining her philosophy.  
  
"Then we will leave tomorrow. I will ask Zetsu to scout for us first thing. I would like this matter to be resolved as quick as possible so that we can get back to our normal duties."  
  
Konan nodded once, and Pein stood up and gently ran the back of his fingers down her soft cheek and watching her blink slowly and led her out the of the dark room...  
  
\----------------------------------------  
  
Deidara was really getting over running and wished that he didn't decide to run for three whole days before properly resting. He was a little more calm now, and was able to cover his tracks a lot better than before, even though he secretly wanted Hitori to pop out of nowhere, punch him (Hopefully not too hard) and before pulling him into her arms and telling him how much of an idiot he was for making her worry so damn much.  
  
He hated that he couldn't convince himself that he didn't miss her, and this lack of control over his feelings and thoughts was rather infuriating for him. Mostly all shinobi had a decent control over their emotions, at least when working, so something like this, especially for a hardened missing nin, and ex-Akatsuki member, was almost unheard of. Although, he did have his suspicions about Pein and Konan being together, which would probably make sense since they never left each other's side. But Pein loving someone was probably more shocking than the idea of him loving someone, his childhood friend at that, so it might make a little bit more sense.  
  
After stumbling upon a small crappy village, he finally found a crappy inn to crash in for about a few hours before he had to get moving again, and he proceeded to drag himself to his crappy room, barely bothered to clean himself in the crappy shower properly before falling onto the crappy bed in a tangle of limbs and random items from his pack spread out on his crappy mattress and very quickly fall into a crappy sleep.  
  
And when he was falling asleep, his last thought was;  _these last few days...have sucked._  
  
\---------------------------------------------  
  
Meanwhile, Hitori was doing the exact opposite of Deidara. She was leaping through the trees at break-neck speed, trying to do everything she could to catch up to him. She hadn't slept or ate since she left, and was kind of surprised that she hadn't fallen asleep while summoning Pakkun earlier on. As a medic nin, she knew how bad a lack of sleep was. But all missing nins, good ones anyway, were quite a light sleepers and usually got used to sleeping for barely 4 hours before getting up and going again. That kind of thing wasn't uncommon at all. Most ninja just adapted, as they should be able to in any situation. She already had problems sleeping before she became a missing nin, or a proper shinobi, because she just couldn't seem to get her mind to stop reeling with thoughts.   
  
She couldn't convince herself that she didn't miss him. Strangely enough, she knew what missing someone felt like, since she had felt it nearly every day after they were torn apart all those years ago. But now, she missed him more than ever. He was such a fool for thinking that he was a burden. He should have known that she had been so happy having him back.   
  
The voice in her mind right now, that sounded quite strangely like the more-open, and optimistic version of her which happened to exist several years ago, had gotten louder, and she could no longer deny the truth it spoke...  
  
Didn't he  _hear her pleading_  those few days ago when she thought that she might lose him again?   
  
Didn't he know  _how much she cared_  about him, be damned if she'd ever admitted it?  
  
Didn't he figure out how much it had  _torn her apart_  when he was taken away from her?  
  
Didn't he realise that  _she'd always loved him_  so much?  
  
 _Wait..................................................WHAT?!?!_  
  
\-------------------------  
  
 _Don't let go of the hand I held out for you.  
I can't stand to see you go.  
You made me feel what I thought impossible.  
I'll hold you in these blood stained hands.  
And I'd forever walk a path of pain, by your side._  
  
\-------------------------


	10. Chapter `10 - New World, Old Life

**Chapter 10 – New World, Old Life**  
  
_The bright light of the sun shined on Hitori's face through the trees, and she slowly woke up from what felt like an eternity of rest. She had been unconscious ever since she passed out last night. With no idea what was happening, and why her head and body hurt so much, she gradually rolled over onto her back, and tried to sit up. It took her a few minutes to achieve this, and she spent the next few minutes just sitting there, on the ground trying to figure out what the hell happened._  
  
"Hitori, I'm sorry...."  
  
_Like that small explosion happening all over again, everything that happened came back in a moment like a shock wave. She remembered Deidara using his jutsu that she didn't recognise in all the fuss. He had shown her a few times this week before when they were doing a bit of training. She had no idea how that creative little prick had thought of it, but it certainly helped.  
  
But unfortunately, it wasn't enough. She had vaguely heard the other nin say something about the Tsuchikage, and if she remembered correctly, he was the leader of Iwagakure. The Village Hidden In The Rocks. They had heard a fair bit about the various hidden villages from just wandering around, and if she recalled correctly, Iwagakure was a militaristic and warmongering village that used their shinobi like they were tools. Nothing more, and nothing less. And it was that thought that terrified her. She knew that Deidara was tough, but he was still controlled by his emotions and quite oftenly didn't think things through as much as he should. Usually that was her job.  
  
She was scared that they would train him up to become a great shinobi, but then just allow him to be killed in some stupid battle that he had nothing to do with. They had promised each other that one day they would become shinobi, but they had never intended on having any loyalty to a particular village. She was kind of happy that he was fulfilling his end of the promise, even if it was in inconceivably terrible circumstances.  
  
With that thought in mind, Hitori decided what she was going to do. She would go to a hidden village and become a shinobi too. The small, dark-haired girl slowly got to her feet, wincing slightly, and picked up the packs that they had thankfully left on the ground last night in all the fuss, and began to drag herself back to the village that they had been in last night. On the way there, she thought about the hidden villages she knew of. She only knew about the five main ones, Konoha, Kiri, Suna, Kumo, and Iwa, but she knew that there was a bunch of others in different countries.  
  
Hitori knew what countries the five main hidden villages were in, but she didn't know where in the land itself they were located. Kiri was out, since it was across the ocean in the Land Of Water. Suna was in the Land Of Wind, amongst the desert, which would make it near impossible to find for someone who wasn't used to that kind of terrain. Kumo was high in the mountains and she wouldn't be able to travel somewhere so cold without proper clothing, which she didn't have and probably couldn't get. Iwa was automatically out, even though she would see Deidara again, it would defeat the purpose of him allowing himself to be taken there to save her.  
  
Konoha was all that was left. Out of all the villages, Konoha seemed like the best option for someone like her. Her and Deidara had been in the Land Of Fire plenty of times before, but they never ventured far into a country or stayed there for too long. They basically already acted like missing nin. She got back to the village while she was musing, and she found a small stall with some cheap food that she very reluctantly paid for, but the man gave her an extra serving for free because he felt sorry for her.  
  
She guessed that looking like she had just been in some sort of small scale war helped. After she ate, she strolled through the small marketplace that was still filled with people who had most likely come here to watch the fireworks display the previous night. It was perfect for a small girl who could conceal herself in their shadows to steal food. Even though the people at the stalls called out to everyone announcing how good their products were etc, they were very, very good at keeping at eye on whatever they were selling. Unfortunately, Deidara wasn't around to help her out any more, so taking extra precautions, she stole a few items of fruit from one stall, running away before releasing the jutsu.  
  
After she had stolen enough food to last her a few days, she filled up her and Deidara's old canteen and put both packs on her back and started trying to get her bearings for where she would have to go to get to Konoha. Giving up, she asked a middle-aged woman if she knew what direction the Land Of Fire was in. The woman seemed to take pity on her, and gave her a new shirt to wear that most likely belonged to her daughter or her niece or something, and pointed her in the direction she needed to go in. Luckily, it was black and it would help Hitori blend in better than her old blue shirt that was a little too big for her even with her growing.  
  
Hitori thanked the woman kindly and quickly changed out of her old torn and bloody shirt and put the new one on behind a building out of sight and put the old one in her pack. They had learnt to never threw anything away that could be used again in a tight spot. She took a deep breath in preparation and started off on her journey to get to the place that would hopefully allow her to become strong enough to get back her best and only friend she'd ever had..._  
  
\----------------------------  
  
Deidara woke the early next morning, with the sun shining right in his face. He realised that he had overslept, and he rushed to get ready for yet another monotonous day of running away from something he probably shouldn't have. He hoped that he could find a way to make some money soon. He could try doing shinobi missions, but it would be very hard to do so and also make sure that he didn't get busted about being alive. He could use something as simple as henge, but that would be a pain. Figuring that he could worry about that later, he paid the fee for the room which used up most of the money he had left, and he decided that he wouldn't eat that day to save the little money that remained.  
  
He walked casually through the village, careful to avoid drawing unnecessary attention to himself and when he got to the forest, he started running, getting a little quicker as he got further away. For half a day, he kept going and it was around two in the afternoon when he decided to stop at a small fresh water creek. He filled up his canteen before draining its contents and filling it up again and sighing satisfactorily at feeling hydrated again. Guessing it wouldn't hurt to rest for a little while, he laid down with his arms behind his head, looking up at the blue sky that was dotted with small, white fluffy clouds.  
  
Trying to stay awake and distract his mind from an annoying persistent train of thought, he tried to count the clouds, which didn't last very long. He couldn't help but regret leaving now. It wasn't possible for him to convince himself otherwise any more. He'd left, without thinking it through and now they were both paying the price. Knowing that he probably wouldn't be able to get in contact with her ever again even though he said he would, he left her alone again. He abandoned her when she had almost begged him a few days ago to not leave her alone again.  
  
Quickly becoming more and more frustrated with himself, he wished that sometimes he was able to keep his emotions under control and make decisions based on rationality and pure logic. It wasn't that he  _couldn't_  make rational choices, it was just that he had never needed to think very much about anything he did before. Unfortunately, the only time when he needed a sudden boost in his logic, it completely ditched him. Left him alone with all the anger and worry about putting Hitori in danger. Left him alone to make a stupid decision which would yet again push his path of life in a direction that he had never been in before.  
  
He started thinking about what happened after they were separated the first time. Loyalty had never meant much to him, and he never really understood why some people blindly followed others and stayed under control. Was it because they had nothing else? Did they find something to believe in? Did it give them a purpose in life? Or was it that they didn't have the strength to be independent? When he was in Iwagakure, he wanted nothing more than to get out of there, but he knew that if he did, he would have hunter nins after him.  
  
When he finally had enough of being ridiculed for his art (something that had always made him instantly see red), and not having the chance to use it often enough, he left. He became a bomber for hire. He had never cared about what he did, or who hired him. He just did it to use his art. To fulfil his artistic and destructive desires. To slake his lust for chaos and havoc. It only took a while for his name to be known and for the four people wearing black clouds, decorated with red clouds to visit him.  
  
It was his arrogance and inability to recognise that his art was not superior to everything in existence that caused him to be forced into becoming a member of the Akatsuki. That day was the reason he hated the Sharingan and the Uchiha, Itachi in particular, and he had trained hard so that he could one day defeat Itachi and prove that his art was superior to the skills and talents of the emotionless red-eyed bastard. To make Itachi and every other Uchiha recognise him as the shinobi who wouldn't be fooled by the Sharingan that insulted his art.  
  
He certainly didn't expect to be found by the pale-skinned, black-haired girl who he had stuck with for several years before being taken away to Iwa. The girl that he whose grey eyes he had never forgotten had turned up in front of him. At first, she had attacked him and they had eventually run away, faking his death so that he could get out of the Akatsuki. He had no idea what to think or do, but he knew that if Hitori was bothered enough to go to all the effort of trying to keep his survival hidden, that meant that she wanted him in her life again.  
  
That idea made him a little happier, but when she treated him with such a cold and heartless disposition that he almost forgot about the old, innocent and sweet Hitori that used to hit him for doing reckless things and making her worry about him, he thought that being alone for so many years might have changed her to the point where there was no trace of the Hitori he once knew left in her. She was like a complete polar opposite of the girl who gave him the last of the water in the canteen, or stole him a new shirt after he ripped the one he was wearing right down the middle.  
  
And then he got absolutely flogged by said girl, who seemed to have no limit to her massive physical strength. To anyone else, it would have seemed like she did it to release her own frustration at his stupidity and punishment for allowing his ego to get in the way and force him to get involved with the Akatsuki, but he knew her better than that, even though she had changed. He knew that it was her way of saying that he was such a fool for allowing himself to be put in so much danger and making her worry, even though she'd probably die before admitting it.  
  
Suddenly realising that he'd probably been laying on the ground thinking for at least an hour now, he quickly jumped up and drank from his canteen before topping it up again and setting off again.  
  
\--------------------------------------------  
  
The four coloured silhouettes stayed silent as they waited for their leader to speak.  
  
"Based on the information I have received about Deidara, I have decided that Konan and I will confront him. Itachi and Kisame are busy, Zetsu is not here as he is currently locating Deidara and Tobi is not fit for this job. We will be heading out as soon as Zetsu finds Deidara, and what I decide to do with him is final. I will inform you all of the outcome. Dismissed." Pein said with an emotionlessly authoritative voice, and no one dared to contradict the man with the hypnotic Rinnegan eyes.  
  
With a single nod, Kisame and Itachi wordlessly flickered out of sight, knowing that there was nothing to say. Tobi didn't seem to have the mental capacity to understand the situation, or maybe he was just too excited that he might get his senpai back to realise the ominous under tone of Pein's words. He also stayed quiet as he disappeared to leave nothing but darkness where his hologram stood a few moments ago.  
  
Pein and Konan returned and opened their eyes to once again see the dimly lit room that Pein worked in most of the day. Konan looked directly in his eyes, and she already knew that he had come to a decision about what he would do with Deidara.  
  
"If we have assumed correctly about the relationship between Deidara and the girl, we are going to leave them be, are we not?" she asked, for confirmation, even though she knew him well enough to not need to.  
  
"That is correct. As you said before, it would be quite hypocritical of me to separate them, and I'm sure you know that I have no intention of becoming a hypocrite." he replied quietly, a hint of kindness evident in his tone when speaking to the woman he had known and loved for most of his life. "We will head out when Zetsu notifies us of Deidara's location."  
  
Konan nodded in reply and gave him a small smile, which he returned faintly before getting back to work...  
  
\------------------------------------------  
  
About two hours before sunset, they received a message from Zetsu saying that he had found Deidara and gave them the location. Pein and Konan immediately set out, hoping that they could catch Deidara before he noticed Zetsu's presence, which was doubtful, but with shinobi, you never knew what they had up their sleeves. Or concealed in their pants legs. Even with someone as straight forward and blunt as Deidara.  
  
With Konan's jutsu, Shikigami no Mai, she was able to keep up with Pein's inhuman speed without using much energy or chakra, and they got to where Zetsu said he spotted Deidara within a little over an hour. Zetsu said that he'd been keeping an eye on Deidara and that he hadn't lost him yet. They began to follow Zetsu and when they came in view of Deidara, he stopped, immediately recognising the chakra that Konan was exerting to use her jutsu. Zetsu took his leave as Pein and Konan approached Deidara.  
  
_Fuck. If Konan is here...that can only mean one thing....Pein_ , Deidara thought, and he knew he was in deep shit. He would probably be killed within the next few minutes. It sucked even more because he couldn't ever say a proper goodbye to Hitori now, not that the last one he said in the note was decent enough. He regretted his earlier decision even more now for that reason, but at the same time he didn't because he knew that if Pein and Konan found him when he was with Hitori, she would have most likely been killed as well.  
  
"Deidara." Pein's voice resonated even though he spoke quietly. "Where is the girl you have been travelling with?"  
  
Deidara's eyes went wide as he realised they already knew about Hitori, and that they were probably going to hunt her down after they'd finished with him. He instantly went on the defensive, his temper going through the roof at the thought of them involving her when he did everything he could to prevent that.  
  
"She has nothing to do with me any more, so don't go near her! She's of no concern to the Akatsuki!" he yelled at the orange-haired man angrily, even though he knew that it was probably no use.  
  
Konan looked at Pein's expressionless face and knew that he was angry. Deidara was not with the girl any more, and by the sounds of it, she had either left him, or he had left her. They had both noticed that the girl wasn't there as soon as they saw Deidara and if his defensive tone was anything to go by, it was clear that something happened between them, and Konan knew that Pein would be angry at this, and he was. Konan couldn't deny that she wasn't even a little angered by this. She looked over at Deidara, who was glaring at them with as much murder in his blue eyes as he could muster with a defiant expression.  
  
With a quick glance back at Pein, she activated her Shikigami no Mai jutsu and rose above the ground on beautiful angel-like wings made of small squares of paper. And the battle was on. Deidara opened his clay pouches that were still attached to his utility belt, and the mouths on both of his hands instantly set to work creating his art. He knew that to attack Konan would probably piss Pein off and he would be killed brutally within a second by the man with the numerous piercings, but he definitely wasn't going to go down with a fight, and damn good, artistic one at that.  
  
In a few seconds, the first of his explosions were ready, and he let them out of his hands, and sent them towards Konan. She retaliated by using her Kami Shuriken jutsu and flinging them at Deidara's explosive birds and stuck them fast to whatever was behind them. Meanwhile, Deidara began creating his clay bird so he could at least try and escape, although it was probably useless to try and escape from the man who was called a 'God' and his partner that was dubbed an angel.  
  
Before he had a chance to create the bird, Konan used her Paper Stream and aimed it at Deidara. Even if they were only pieces of paper, Deidara knew that in a jutsu used by an S-class shinobi, they were deadly weapons. Weapons used to kill. He ran full pelt out of the way and thankfully avoided them all. He used some more explosives and hoped that his clay bird would be ready any second. Konan came back down closer to the ground and began avoiding the small clay birds flying her way.  
  
Pein stood by watching the fight between Deidara and his partner, making sure that no harm came to her. He knew that she was a fantastic shinobi and that she wasn't ranked as S-class for no reason, but he couldn't help but worry about her. Suddenly, he thought he felt the faintest tingle of chakra for a second in the distance, but with the two large chakras doing battle in front of him he couldn't concentrate on it properly, and he brushed the thought aside, thinking it was just Zetsu travelling.  
  
It certainly wasn't Zetsu...  
  
\------------------------------------------  
  
Hitori was running along with Pakkun at the normal moderately fast paced. She could see that Pakkun was getting tired from running for several days straight, even though she had sent him to rest as much as he would allow himself too. She had made sure to not push the little pug too hard and so they were going at a speed that was comfortable for both of them. They had talked a little on the way and Pakkun was glad that Hitori didn't seem as stressed as when he was with her yesterday. She did seem a little down, but she had no problem talking to him about random things as they ran through whatever country they were in right now.  
  
All of a sudden, about a hundred metres ahead, Hitori saw a head pop out of the ground, and then the rest of the body. Pakkun noticed it too, and they both slowed down dramatically to a cautious walk. When they saw the black cloak and red clouds, Hitori was instantly on her guard. She told Pakkun to leave, who refused at first, worried about her going up against an Akatsuki member alone, but she told him that she'd be fine and that she wasn't planning on fighting him. Reluctantly, Pakkun left, but not before telling Hitori to be careful.  
  
When the Akatsuki member turned around, she saw an orange swirling mask on his face. She had heard about this somewhere before...  
  
"SENPAI'S FRIEND!?!?!" he yelled happily before prancing, yes, prancing over to Hitori, who was quite stunned at the sudden cheery outburst from the man in front of her. "Are you Deidara-senpai's friend?" he asked, still with a scarily eager voice and Hitori shrunk back slightly out of being thoroughly weirded out by the person who was supposed to be an Akatsuki member, but seemed more like the member of a 'Yell Loudly And Obnoxiously At People You Don't Know' group. Then it clicked with her.  
  
"Wait, did you say Deidara?" she asked the man, or boy, or whatever, realising that Deidara's second partner called him senpai and was apparently quite goofy and annoying.  
  
"Yay! You are senpai's friend!" he said happily and threw his arms around the unnerved Hitori.  
  
"Yes, I am Deidara's friend. Do you know where he is?" she asked with urgency that he didn't seem to pick up on, and continued to hug Hitori, who was trying to pry him off, however when she asked, he stepped back and put a finger to his chin, as if thinking.  
  
"Leader and Konan-chan are going to meet up with Deidara-senpai. That's all Tobi knows..." Tobi said, as he tapped his finger against his chin.  
  
"Leader?....Pein..." she said to herself quietly as she realised who 'Leader' was. And she then realised what 'going to meet up with Deidara' meant. "They're going to kill him...Tobi! Pein and Konan are going to  _kill_  Deidara, don't you get that?" she yelled with a voice full of worry and anger.  
  
Tobi immediately stopped moving around and shifting his feet happily and stood dead still. His aura went from happy to utterly dejected in an instant. "Why are they going to kill senpai? He didn't do anything wrong...I don't want them to kill Deidara-senpai!" he said quietly at first, but increasing in volume, with a hint of anger in his voice.  
  
As if on cue, she felt the tingle of chakra in the distance. She lowered her head as she concentrated. Two. One of them she didn't recognise, but the other one.......after a sudden surge, she recognised it as easily as her own.  _Deidara!_  
  
"Tobi! He's this way. If you don't want him to die, come with me. NOW!" she yelled before running faster that she had ever done so before. Tobi was running a few metres behind her, struggling to keep up and she thanked the stars for her medical jutsu which allowed her to be extra sensitive to chakra. Deidara's chakra had always had quite a rough feel to it, and it was the complete opposite to her own, which was very smooth and natural.  
  
She could hear explosions, getting louder and louder as she nearly flew through the trees and felt like she was gliding more than running. Within a few moments, the explosions sounded like they weren't far off, and she turned to the right slightly, so she could attempt to flank whoever was fighting him. When they started getting close, she stopped and waited for Tobi to catch up. He seemed to have his chakra masked, but with someone like him, it didn't hurt to reinforce the seriousness of the situation. Tobi landed beside her, and looked at her with what she assumed was a questioning expression.  
  
"Tobi, they're just there. I'm going to go around to the right and try to sneak up on them, and you should go around the left. But you have to wait until I call you out. This could save Deidara's life, okay?" she said, trying to be calm but firm in what she said to him.  
  
"Hai, Tobi understands. Tobi will do his best!" he whispered quietly and saluted to her before stalking around to the left. Hitori only hoped that he messed up enough for him to be noticed so that she could use the opening.  
  
She continued to make her way around to the right, in line with where she felt the unfamiliar chakra signature coming from. When she was close enough, she could see through the trees that he was fighting a woman, made out of...what looked like paper. She assumed that was Konan, the only woman in the Akatsuki who could turn her body into paper at will as well as use it for weaponry.  _Thank fuck for Deidara telling me about the Akatsuki members and any abilities they had that he knew of_ , she thought as she takes a deep breath and nodding once to herself before grabbing three kunai from her leg holster and jumping out, flying at Konan.  
  
Konan was taken by surprise since she was having a hard time dealing with Deidara as it was, and she just barely moved out of the way of the kunai that Hitori had aimed at her with chakra forcing it to go faster. Konan made several more Kami Shuriken and sent them at the woman who had just attacked her. Hitori hit the ground in time to dodge and threw another kunai at the paper woman. Again, she dodged it and created more Kami Shuriken and Hitori reacted a second too late when she was half-way through throwing the last kunai, and the paper shuriken hit her left arm.  
  
What was supposed to be Hitori disappeared in a puff of smoke, and Konan, Pein and Deidara all realised that it was a Kage Bunshin. The real Hitori had concealed herself in the shadow of a tree, which was getting longer as the sun went down, and she used the clone to buy her a few seconds of time as she moved to make sure that Konan would be in range. She did the seals for her biggest Katon jutsu which was taught to her by the Sandaime Hokage, Sarutobi Hiruzen himself. She took a deep breath and dropped her Kage Oni jutsu, and no one noticed her standing there until she yelled out the name of the jutsu.  
  
"Katon: Karyu Endan!" she yelled and exhaled as the almost white-hot flames flew out towards Konan who unfortunately didn't notice them soon enough, and some of her left side got burnt.  
  
Hitori landed silently on the ground aside Deidara, who was frozen with shock. First, he saw a Kage Bunshin of Hitori, and now the real thing. And she actually  _injured_  Konan. Before anyone could react, Hitori ran over and stood next to Deidara, but didn't take her eyes off the two people in front of her wearing Akatsuki cloaks.  
  
"Pein, Konan. Deidara has nothing to do with you any more. He is of no concern to the Akatsuki." she said loudly to them both, trying to make her voice as toneless as possible, indicating that she was serious.  
  
Simultaneously, both Pein and Konan realised how much what she said sounded like what Deidara said when Pein asked about the location of the girl he was with. Almost word-for-word, in fact. They quickly glanced at each other, knowing that this was the girl, and that probably meant that Deidara would have left her, and she must have been following him. Also, it seemed like the girl's abilities were certainly not anything to sneeze at, as she was able to take  _all three of them_  by surprise as well as use a high ranked Katon jutsu with extreme proficiency, and use a concealment jutsu that neither of them recognised.  
  
"Hitori! What the fuck are you doing? Get out of here! You aren't a match for Pein and neither am I!" Deidara yelled at her, finally snapping out of his surprise.  
  
She turned her head slowly, and glared at him with every ounce of anger she had about what he did to her, which was quite an immeasurable amount. He flinched almost imperceptibly at the look in her eyes, but then glared back defiantly. She stepped closer to him, and swiftly smacked him upside the head.  
  
"You're an absolute fool, Deidara. We always looked after each other back in the day, and I never wanted that to change." she was quiet for a moment, then turned away from him, but not so much that she couldn't keep a close eye on Pein and Konan, who seemed to be just idly standing there, watching the exchange. "Besides, I don't doubt that neither of us are a match for him as well as Konan, but I love you too damn much to stand here and watch you get killed while I do nothing." she said quietly, and took a deep breath.  
  
Before he realised it, she was charging full speed at Pein, with a kunai in each hand. She felt like she'd been punched in the gut as she flew backwards to land back where she started. She dropped to one knee to catch the breath that had been knocked out of her and watched Pein with confusion. He wasn't close enough to touch her, and she was one of the fastest shinobi she knew, so she doubted that he used Shunshin no jutsu without her being able to follow his movements. His voice took her by surprise.  
  
"What is your name?" Pein asked emotionlessly, but inwardly, he was rather interested to see who this girl was.  
  
Hitori narrowed her eyes and stood up to her full height, but answered nonetheless. "Sokkenai Hitori. Better known as the Kage Oni."  
  
"The Kage Oni who made the assassination attempt on the Tsuchikage a few years ago, I assume?" he said, instantly recognising the name that had unnerved even some of the most hardened shinobi ever since the event.  
  
Hitori smirked faintly and huffed in slight amusement that he knew her reputation. "You know it."  
  
"And would you also be the woman that Deidara has been seen with recently?"  
  
She quickly glanced at Deidara before answering. "That would be me. Why do you want to know?"  
  
"Then we have no more business with either of you." Pein answered without really answering and turned to Konan, but Hitori's voice calling his name stopped him.  
  
"Pein! What the fuck does that mean?" she said loudly, thoroughly confused at how quickly the situation changed.  
  
"It would be hypocritical for me to separate the two of you, who clearly have a very strong bond. I have no desire to become a hypocrite by breaking that bond." he said, while walking over to Konan, who had a large hole in her cloak and part of the sleeve burnt off.  
  
"For shinobi, a life with love is a blessing. We have fleeting, uncertain lives and having a thing such a love in it should be protected at all costs. We had previously decided before coming here that if the two of you had such a bond, that we would take no further part in your lives. And I believe that you have that bond." Konan spoke up, her usually apathetic and calm voice hinted with pain, but also with respect for Deidara and Hitori.  
  
"So, you're saying that because we care about each other, you are going to leave us alone?" Deidara asked, still confused and shocked at what all this meant.  
  
"No. We are saying that because you  _love_  each other, we are leaving you alone." she said slowly and glanced at Hitori, who abruptly remembered her earlier confession and she turned away grumpily and crossed her arms as her cheeks reddened slightly as Deidara looked at her as he too recalled her confession.  
  
Konan just smiled and repeated her words. "Remember what I said. For shinobi, a life with love is a blessing. Protect your bond, Deidara, Hitori."  
  
Hitori looked over at them and nodded once in respect and acceptance. Pein returned the gesture and Konan smiled faintly again. Deidara smiled and nodded at them both before Pein picked Konan up carefully, bridal-style and used a transportation jutsu to take them back to the Akatsuki headquarters in Amegakure.  
  
Deidara looked back over to Hitori and began walking over to her, even though she defiantly looked away from him, her face pulled into a slightly forced scowl. All he could think about was pulling her into his arms, and not letting her go ever again.  
  
Instead....he got something else.  
  
"SENPAIIIII!!!" yelled the shrill, happy voice of Tobi who flew out of the trees and landed  _on_  Deidara. "Tobi is so happy that Deidara-senpai is okay!" he continued to yell with a happy voice as he squeezed Deidara, who just stood there in shock after stumbling backwards several steps.  
  
After a moment, Deidara was able to shove him off. "You certainly haven't changed Tobi. Just as stupid as always." he said, with as much anger as he could, but the soft laugh didn't go unnoticed by Hitori, who smiled and shook her head at the sight of seeing their antics first hand.  
  
"What will you do now Deidara-senpai? Are you going to marry Hitori-chan?" Tobi said bouncing up and down with excitement. At the prospect of marriage, both Deidara and Hitori tensed up and Hitori just huffed awkwardly, before looking away with a blatantly shocked and flustered expression.  
  
"I'm not sure what we'll do now, yeah. I don't think we're getting married though." Deidara said, scratching his head awkwardly and glancing at Hitori, who was almost doubled over with her jaw dropped and eyes wide and looking slightly embarrassed. After she recovered, she walked over to stand next to Deidara.  
  
"Yeah, marriage isn't on the cards Tobi. I think we're just going to go home." Hitori confirmed as she started to realise how exhausted she was.  
  
"So, this is goodbye Tobi. We might see you again sometime." Deidara tried to cut off Tobi before he could say anything else weird.  
  
"Goodbye Deidara-senpai! Tobi will never forget you!" Tobi said loudly, as he hugged Deidara again tightly and sobbed. Deidara pushed him off and Tobi latched onto Hitori, still sobbing. Hitori already had problems with people being in her personal space, even with Deidara, and this was probably going to take three weeks of keeping a one metre radius around herself that no one could enter to make up for this.  
  
"Tobi is glad that he met Deidara-senpai's future wife! Tobi won't forget you either Hitori-chan! Thank you for helping senpai!" Tobi was still latched onto Hitori, who just patted him on the back a few times before finally pushing him off her and laughing awkwardly, even though it sounded more like she was going to cry from over exposure to Tobi.  
  
Tobi finally stood back, and said goodbye again before disappearing into the ground. Deidara turned to Hitori who was looking at the hole in the ground that Tobi went through and shaking her head and shuddering slightly.  
  
"You okay?" Deidara said, looking her over for any signs of injury.  
  
"That's my line." Hitori answered, and looked at him as if to say 'You were the one fighting Konan for a few minutes before I rocked up'.  
  
He just huffed in amusement in reply. "What do you think we should do now?"  
  
"Well, I just want to go home, get drunk and sleep for a week. I haven't slept since you left, and I've only eaten once." she said and rubbed her face with her hands tiredly.  
  
Deidara just laughed and threw an arm around her shoulder and pulled her close as they strolled off lazily into the trees.  
  
\---------------------------------------  
  
_Three months later..._  
  
It was a cold evening that Hitori returned home on after being away on a three-day mission to some place that she had already forgotten the name of to do some lame retrieval mission of some fancy item that she had also forgotten about, that had been stolen from a nobleman whose name and face she had forgotten as well.  
  
"Deidara! I'm back. Get out of bed you lazy bum! I bet you've barely moved all fucking day." Hitori said loudly as she walked back in the house. Her mission was so boring, and all she wanted to do was come home and have a drink (or ten) and not move for at least the next 48 hours.  
  
She walked into the bedroom to find Deidara curled up in bed, under the covers, just as she assumed, even though it was only around 7pm. He smiled happily when she came in and he held his arms out, gesturing for a hug. They had both been working on opening up to each other over the last three months, and they were a lot more comfortable around each other now. Hitori had made a affection limit a day, and certain things were worth certain points and Deidara had to work within those boundaries, even though he broke them every other day, much to Hitori's chagrin, even though they both knew she didn't really care. Hitori gave up and rolled her eyes and laid down on the bed, and Deidara pulled her close and nuzzled the back of her neck.  
  
"You know, since you were away for  _three whole days_...does that mean that we have to catch up on everything that we missed out on?" he asked mischievously as he pushed himself up and hovered over Hitori on his hands and knees with a smirk and slightly clouded eyes.  
  
"Yeah, it does actually." she answered seductively as she could and wrapped her arms around his neck and gently pulled him down closer to her. But just before his lips made contact with hers, she unwrapped her hands and pushed him back abruptly. "Which means I have  _three whole days_  of drinking to catch up on! So I'm going to go get me some sake, bitch!" she said loudly, trying to ruin the mood she had created for the sole purpose of bringing it crashing down again.  
  
Deidara growled with mock irritation at her teasing, even though he totally loved it. He figured that within the hour, they would probably both be well on their way to being drunk and Hitori would be telling him about how easy and boring her mission was. Ever since the incident on the mission where she was supposed to take out Sozoku, who ended up being a bigger target than they had first expected, Tsunade had apologised and taken it on herself to thoroughly check and double check any mission she was going to give Hitori.  
  
He lazily got out of bed, and walked out to the kitchen to find Hitori choosing between two bottles of sake. He walked up behind her and snaked his arms around her waist, and tightened his grip when she didn't flinch or resist. He rested his chin on her shoulder and watched as she bit her lip and looked between both bottles in indecision. He laid kisses along her shoulder and up her neck, smirking as she inhaled sharply when he nibbled her earlobe gently. Stopping his ministrations before he punched him for overdoing it, he just snuggled closer to her before speaking.  
  
"I missed you. The house was so quiet without you." he said quietly and he smiled as she leaned her head against his sleepily.  
  
"You know what? Screw the sake. Bed time." Hitori put both bottles back in the cupboard and strolled back to the bedroom, with Deidara still clinging onto her like some sort of parasite. He had become such a lovesick puppy with her, and she had no problem ripping him off about it.  
  
Hitori managed to pry him off her and got changed, much to Deidara's pleasure, and turned around to see him sitting up, leaning back on his hands, displaying his well-toned torso wonderfully. She took in the sight for a few seconds and walked over to the bed, swinging her hips teasingly, and laughing inwardly as she watched Deidara's eyes follow their movements like a hawk.  
  
She got to the end of the bed and crawled on all fours towards him, hovering over the part of him that was already under the covers. He was staring straight at her with lust clouded eyes, and smirking so sexily that Hitori swore that any woman in their right mind who had the pleasure of seeing that smirk would instantly pounce on him. She leant forward as if to kiss him, but pulled back at the last second and sat down on his lap, and his looking like he had to bite back a moan, didn't go unnoticed by her. She finally gave in and let him have his way for a while before getting up and laying down next to him.  
  
"Oh no you don't." was all he said before they made it so she couldn't be called a virgin any more...  
  
Later that night, they were snuggled up to each other, and Deidara mumbled something that Hitori couldn't understand. She sat up to look at him, and asked him to repeat what he said.  
  
With a sigh, he gave up, knowing that it was too late to take back what he said. "I said....I-I love you, Hitori."  
  
Her eyes went wide at his words, and she had to blink a few times before it fully set in. Then she smiled a smile happier than Deidara have ever seen on her face. "I love you too, Dei." she said, if a little awkwardly and looking rather embarrassed.  
  
Suddenly, he remembered something and sat up. He moved over so he could get up off the bed and he went to the dresser and started rummaging through his pack for something. Finally, he found it, and held in his hand so Hitori wouldn't see it. He walked back over to the bed and sat cross-legged in front of her with a smile on his face. She raised her eyebrow in question and he just took hold of her hand and dropped the item on it.  
  
Looking down, she saw a silver necklace. The chain was thin and the pendant was the kanji for shadow. She held it up in front of her to look at it properly and smiled at the sight. Deidara's smile grew when he realised that she really liked it, and she put it on, and looked at him thankfully.  
  
"What's this for, yeah? And where did you get it?" she asked, still in awe of the kind gesture.  
  
"Well, actually I saved up when we were kids and bought it. I was going to give it to you on that night, but yeah, you know." he admitted and scratched the back of his head, not wanting to bother elaborating on the memory of the night that had separated them for many years.  
  
"Thank you." she said quietly and gently kissed his cheek before laying back down.  
  
Deidara joined her, and pulled her close, and they soon fell into a calm and happy sleep...


End file.
